Morphogenesis
Laboratory

Collective cell behaviour is an integral aspect of metazoan life span. It regulates several key processes including gastrulation, tissue morphogenesis, wound healing and unfortunately cancer progression. Currently the study of collective phenomenon aims to understand how simple behavioural interactions between participating members lead to a coherent, and sophisticated outcome at the group level. Though sparsely understood one would presume that communication among the participating members would play a key role to allow the members to collectively sense the environment and respond by adjusting their cellular behaviour including their numbers, shape and physical location. We are employing the Drosophila oogenesis model to understand the molecular and cellular basis of collective behaviour during fate specification, cellular movement and epithelial cell shape change.