Regulation and Evolution of Development (RED) lab

Head of the lab: Prof. Smadar Ben-Tabou de-Leon

Lab manager: Dr. Tsvia Gildor

Where genetics and mechanics meet! 

Join our team!

We are now recruiting MSc and Ph.D. students! Post-docs are welcome, subject to funding

Please send your CV and research interests to:  

The instructions for constructing the body plan of a multicellular organism are encoded in the genome of the species. One of the fundamental questions in biology is how are genomic programs executed during embryogenesis and how they evolve. Gene regulatory networks control cell fate specification, but this information is not sufficient to make organs. To build an organ, the cells must apply mechanical force on their environment, measure its mechanical properties and make local computation of how to proceed. In our lab, we use the sea urchin larval skeletogenesis as a model to decipher the genetic and mechanical information processing involved in organogenesis and how it changes during evolution.

Our discoveries illuminate the molecular and cellular control of morphogenetic processes and how these processes evolve. 

For further review of our current research projects, see Research.

For a list of our previous works, see Publications.