The overarching goal of our lab is to understand how cell size is controlledin animal tissues, and why cell size regulation is important for tissue functions.
While different cell types in our body differ in size by many orders of magnitude, cells of a given type are incredibly uniform in size, suggesting that cell size is tightly controlled and crucial for tissue function. Consistent with this, significant cell size alterations are often associated with diseases and ageing. Nevertheless, surprisingly little is known about how size affects specific aspects of cell physiology, and we are onlybeginning to understand what molecular mechanisms regulate animal cell size.
We are an interdisciplinary lab. Weapply a systems biology approachandadiverse set of state-of-the-art quantitative techniques (including live-cell fluorescence microscopy, flow cytometry, SILAC proteomics, CRISPR/Cas9-mediated gene editing, and mathematical modeling) to solve a century-old puzzle ofhow animal cells regulate their size and how cell size affects cell behaviours in health and disease.