Research

how do cells switch into distinct types in complex environments?

The differentiation of cells into functionally distinct types enables animals to build multicellular bodies and allows their closest-living relatives, choanoflagellates, to take advantage of different environments. We study choanoflagellates as a model to investigate how cells transition between different cell types. Choanoflagellates are (mostly) single-celled microeukaryotes with complex lives, as they can transition between cell states in response to environmental and bacterial cues, including multicellular (left), benthic, and multiple swimming states. With a combination of molecular genetics, biochemistry, functional genomics, and cell biology, we are exploring the molecular mechanisms and environmental cues that govern the transitions between different choanoflagellates cell types.

what evolutionary changes enable cell differentiation?

The emergence of animals required a diversification of cell types that divided labor between different cells and integrated their functions into a whole multicellular organism. Ancestral mechanisms for cell differentiation in the unicellular progenitors of animals provided the groundwork for animals to evolve diverse cell types. Although it is impossible to directly study the unicellular ancestor that gave rise to animals, comparisons with our close unicellular relatives can reconstruct features of ancestral genetic pathways that contributed to the rise of animals. As the closest-living relatives of animals, choanoflagellates have tremendous potential to illuminate core mechanisms in animal biology. Thus, we incorporate novel functional data from our research to draw comparisons with animal systems to reconstruct the origin and evolution of cellular differentiation in choanoflagellates and animals.

Propelling Genetics for Emerging Models

The inception of gene delivery and genome editing in choanoflagellates presents an unprecedented opportunity to explore their molecular biology. We are advancing those nascent methods to improve the efficiency, precision, versatility, and ease of those methods to accelerate research in our growing community. As many of these developments have been the first of their kind for a choanoflagellate, we are keenly interested applying lessons from our experience to promote molecular genetics in diverse eukaryotes to elucidate the evolution of core features and remarkable variations in eukaryotic biology.