Studies of developmental biology in CDB span a broad range of topics from germline and stem cell biology, organogenesis, adipogenesis, morphogen gradients, scaling, neural circuits, tissue patterning and cell specification, chromatin biology, and transcriptional dynamics. Further studies in the department investigate diseases of developmental origin, and how developmental pathways are recapitulated in tumorigenesis and regeneration. Model systems range from Drosophila, zebrafish, mouse, Xenopus, and ants to embryonic stem cells of mouse and human, and induced pluripotent stem cells. Interdisciplinary systems-wide approaches are used to elucidate molecular mechanisms acting in these various processes, including cell biological analysis, quantitative imaging, high throughput genome-scale approaches, proteomics, and the latest genome editing technologies. High-end microscopy equipment is the work force of CDB research. To this end CDB hosts a Microscopy Core that includes lightsheet (SPIM), super-resolution, two photon, and confocal microscopes.
