Pioneers in Biomedical Research Seminar: Building and Maintaining Biological Tubes
Many organs such as pancreas, kidney and lung, and tissues such as blood vessels, are made of biological tubes. Dr. Cleaver's lab studies the formation of blood vessels from endothelial cells and how both the cytoskeleton and cell-cell junctions must dynamically reorganize during this "tubulogenesis" event. Remarkably, the lab has identified a similar molecular machinery that is required to drive epithelial cells of the pancreatic primordium to forming lumens and branches. Together the team's work leverages cell biology, biomechanics and genetics to better understand the events that underlie organogenesis.