The Ovary

Molecular Regulation of Clearance by Nonprofessional Phagocytes in the Drosophila Ovary

Every day, hundreds of billions of cells die by different modalities to maintain homeostasis within the human body.  If an apoptotic cell corpse isn’t cleared away, it can proceed to a secondary necrotic state which can cause damage and disease The aim of these studies is to determine what genes are differentially regulated in nonprofessional phagocytes thus transitioning them to a clearance state. Diane’s research aims to identify molecular changes within the epithelial follicle cells and gene hits are being investigated in an effort to identify if they play a role in one of the already identified core clearance pathways or have their own novel pathways.

Computational Approach to Phagocytosis

Shruthi is interested in studying long-range cell signaling dynamics during phagocytosis. She uses computational approaches to identify components of the phagocytosis machinery in late-stage oogenesis from high-throughput sequencing, proteomics, and fluorescence microscopy data.