Anna Sokac
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, IL·Biology
Actin filaments act as a scaffold that gives cells their shape, and a set of proteins reshapes that scaffold when cells change form. Textbooks rarely explain how genes and signals upstream control this reshaping, or how proteins work together to do it.
- Fields
Biology
Genetics
Biophysics
- Topics
actin cytoskeleton
actin remodeling
actomyosin contraction
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jul 2027
What they work on
- Test whether measurable features of transcription of five actin-regulator genes explain the even, synchronized timing of cellularization in Drosophila embryos, using live imaging of mRNAs down to single molecules.
- Determine how actin-binding proteins drive the two back-to-back phases of actomyosin ring contraction during cellularization, one that depends on Myosin-2 and one that does not, using fly genetics and quantitative live imaging.
- Test whether the heat-triggered Actin Stress Response threatens embryo survival by upsetting the balance of free actin between the cytoplasm and the nucleus in Drosophila embryos.
More about the research
They also rarely explain how a change in cell shape leads, reliably and on time, to a healthy organism. Because problems before, during or after actin remodeling can all cause failure, the lab seeks a whole-picture view. Its system is cellularization, the first tissue-building event in fruit fly (Drosophila) embryos, when thousands of nuclei become wrapped into separate cells at once.
Why it matters
Because the actin proteins and processes studied are shared across organisms, finding where actin remodeling breaks down, including under stresses such as fever or drugs, could offer clues to the genes and conditions behind birth defects and disease. The work adds a connected picture of how gene expression, protein machinery and stress responses together decide whether an embryo develops successfully.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Kenneth Irvine
Rutgers University-New Brunswick, NJ·Biology
Determine how phase-separated condensates of Warts with Jub, and Jub-promoted phosphorylation of the Warts N-terminus, inhibit this Hippo pathway kinase in Drosophila tissues.
Bing He
Dartmouth College, NH·Biology
Determine how Rab11-mediated vesicle trafficking feeds back to reinforce the supracellular actomyosin network, the contractile actin-and-myosin meshwork spanning many cells, during apical constriction in Drosophila mesoderm precursors.
Lauren Anllo
East Carolina University, NC·Biology
Identify the signaling intermediaries that connect Slit and FGF signals from visceral muscle to expression of islet, a gene-regulating protein that directs niche cell movement, in the Drosophila embryonic testis.
The school
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign: 41 labs on PI Pages, $907M a year on research, 870 research doctorates a year.
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