We are home to four research groups that share a mission to decipher biological principles in the context of animal development and tissue homeostasis. We also aim to train the next generation of developmental biologists through inspiring teaching at the level of bachelor, master, and PhD education in the biology department and Utrecht Life Sciences community. Learn more about our research or teaching through the links in the menu, or continue scrolling to read the latest news from our division.
Sensitive similarity searches and structure prediction unearthed that MES-3 is a highly divergent ortholog of the canonical PRC2 component SUZ12.
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Congratulations to Victoria Garcia on her paper describing the composition of the C. elegans Crumbs complex!
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Suzan Ruijtenberg received a grant from the Centre for Unusual Collaborations (Cuco). Together with an inter-disciplinary team of nine researchers, Suzan will co-create a toolbox of modular mini-games that can support interdisciplinary collaborations and education.
Congratulations Jorian on the first paper in 2022! We show that ERM-1 phosphorylation and binding to NRFL-1 NHERF1/EBP50 redundantly control intestinal morphology.
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Ana's recent publication in STAR Protocols describes the generation of mixed murine organoids which can be used to model cellular interactions. Congratulations Ana!
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Amalia's recent publication in PLOS Genetics shows that LET-413 Scribble is essential in the epidermis for animal development, and for directed outgrowth of the seam cells. Congratulations Amalia!
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Jason's paper in Genetics presents C. elegans light-induced coclustering (CeLINC), an optical binary protein–protein interaction assay to determine whether two proteins interact in vivo.
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We are proud to welcome Saskia Suijkerbuijk as a new group leader! Saskia’s group is interested in how the developmental process Cell Competition regulates tissues in health and disease. As a postdoc in the lab of Eugenia Piddini at the Gurdon Institute (Cambridge – UK), she found that adenomas in the intestine of the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster use cell competition to drive their growth. When she returned to the Netherlands, she expanded her line of research under the wings of Jacco van Rheenen (Hubrecht Institute and Netherlands Cancer Institute). During this time her group developed 3D co-culture system to model cell competition driven by colorectal cancer in mouse organoids. We are very excited to expand our division with this new line of research and are looking forward to many fruitful collaborations.