Molecular Mechanisms of Embryo Formation from a Single Cell

The body plans of individuals in most animal species are very similar to each other. For example, almost all humans are born with two arms, two legs, twenty digits, two eyes, two ears, a single nose, etc. Importantly, all these structural features are arranged in precise positions in the overall body plan of each person. This consistency is no accident. There are powerful genetic mechanisms that ensure that the same body plan is established every time a human egg is fertilized with a human sperm. Professor Stephen Small studies these body patterning mechanisms using the fruit fly Drosophila as a model system. He and his lab have identified a network of genes that gradually lays out a genetic blueprint for the mature body in the first few hours after fertilization. His talk will focus on how boundaries of gene expression divide the embryo into regions that will adopt specific cell fates, thus organizing the shape and structure of the mature body plan.

Stephen Small received his PhD in developmental biology in 1988 from the University of Cincinnati. For his thesis research, he worked with Dr. Richard Akeson on the structure and function of different NCAM polypeptides in rat development. From 1989-1993, he worked as a post-doctoral fellow at Columbia University and at UC San Diego with Dr. Michael Levine on the patterning mechanisms that establish the body plan in Drosophila. He joined NYU's Biology Department in 1993 as an assistant professor, and continues to study how genes control the establishment of different body forms.

Associate Professor of Practice Danyang Yu will be introducing Professor Small.