I've always been fascinated by how order arises in biological systems across different scales. This fascination has led me to study spatial cell cycle patterns in large individual cells for my PhD work and is now continued in my work on how polarity is established across scales in regenerating planaria.

Determining Head-Tail Polarity in Regenerating Planaria

When a planaria flatworm is cut into multiple fragments, each fragment regenerates into a whole new worm. This is an incredible process that requires many control systems to function correctly. My research is focused on the question of what signals determine head or tail formation at a given wound and how these signals are communicated across the tissue. One system I use to answer these questions are double-headed animals, in which this communication is aberrant, leading to abnormal regeneration.

This work is aiming to address issues of how morphogen gradients are set up and adapted to different forms and the role stem cells play in encoding morphology.

Read more about the role of the nervous system in setting up morphogen gradients here:
doi: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1006904

Regeneration of the Nervous System and the Nervous System in Regeneration

The nervous system plays an important role in regeneration, as many experiments have shown. I am interested in understanding how the nervous system specifically contributes to controlling planaria regeneration.

Planaria are also one of the few species that can regenerate their entire central nervous system, so we are looking to them to increase our understanding of neuronal plasticity and how new neurons are formed and integrated. I am working to uncover the mechanisms that guide the regeneration of the nervous system and how it is patterned.

Pattern formation during cell divisions in starfish oocytes

During my PhD work, I spent 4 years in the Lenart lab at EMBL, studying the cell cycle and cell mechanics of the meiotic cell division in starfish oocytes. This cell division is crucial in producing a fertilisable egg and because oocytes are very large cells, their mechanics and cell cycle are adapted. My work established that a key cell cycle factor - cdk1/cyclinB - forms a spatiotemporal gradient during cell division, which effects the relative contractility of the cell cortex. This spatial difference induces a fascinating phenomenon, the surface contraction wave, which passes across the cell immediately before the division.

Read more about this work here:
doi:10.1038/s41467-017-00979-6
doi:10.1371/journal.pcbi.1006588