This Presidential Young Investigator award is to support research aimed at an understandling of morphogenetic mechanisms at the cellular and molecular levels, that is the mechanisms responsible for organizing embryonic cells into complex tissues and organs. The research program will examine cell-cell interactions and cell-substrate interactions to study the directional cell migrations that characterize the early development of multicellular organisms and the regulation of gene expression and cell differentiation. The model system is the sea urchin embryo which is transparent, thus cell migration may be monitored in vivo. This research should answer fundamental questions about the development of complex tissues and organs from undifferentiated single cell and small cell populations.
