The questions of how an embryo decides where to place its organs (“positional information”) and how these organs are correctly organized into functional three dimensional structures (“morphogenesis”) are of fundamental importance.

We study these processes in the frog, Xenopus, and in the zebrafish, Danio.

We have two major areas of interest: the nervous system, including very early patterning events as well as later events that build the three dimensional structure of the brain, and the extreme anterior of the embryo that forms the primary mouth, and is an evolutionarily conserved and important region.

Frog and fish embryos are ideal for these studies, since the events we analyze take place very early in development, when mammalian embryos are tiny and inaccessible.

Genes that are important for frog and fish embryogenesis are conserved in mammals, and our research is therefore relevant for understanding normal and abnormal human development.