Kenneth Irvine
Rutgers University-New Brunswick, NJ·Biology
How does an organ know how big to grow and what shape to take? Cells feel mechanical forces from their neighbors, and these forces combine with chemical signals to steer growth and shape.
- Fields
Biology
Genetics
Biochemistry
- Topics
Hippo signaling
Warts
Yorkie
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Apr 2029
What they work on
- 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.
- Test how tension-dependent inhibition of Warts contributes to activation of Yorkie, the Hippo pathway's growth-promoting transcription factor, and its mammalian homologues during regeneration and oncogenic stimulation.
- Investigate how Hippo signaling is regulated in the Drosophila glial cells that form the blood-brain barrier and controls their proliferation.
- Define how the spectrin βH-Spec (Karst) and myosin compete and cooperate for actin binding to shape cells, and whether lateral β-Spectrin also competes with myosin during morphogenesis.
- Investigate how Notch signaling regulates the cytoskeleton to build the dorsal-ventral compartment boundary of the Drosophila wing disc.
More about the research
Getting this wrong can cause birth defects in which organs are the wrong size or shape. A failure to stop growth leads to cancer. This research uses the fruit fly Drosophila to study how cells sense and control mechanical tension, and how that tension feeds into growth-control pathways such as Hippo signaling. Hippo is a conserved pathway that limits tissue growth.
Why it matters
Organs that grow to the wrong size or shape cause birth defects, and the inability to limit growth in mature tissue leads to cancer. Because the proteins studied are highly conserved, understanding how mechanical force controls growth could inform cancer biology. It could also guide regenerative medicine efforts to build functional organs from stem cells.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Robin Harris
Arizona State University Campus Immersion, AZ·Biology
Identify how necrosis in the Drosophila wing imaginal disc triggers necrosis-induced apoptosis (NiA), cell death far from the wound, using a genetic tool that induces necrosis and manipulates surrounding cells.
Jyoti Misra
Stony Brook University, NY·Genetics
Test how the endocytic machinery that internalizes surface proteins, together with a competitive inhibitor, establishes and maintains the spatial organization of Dachsous–Fat signaling across Drosophila tissues.
Sergey Troyanovsky
Northwestern University, IL·Biology
Determine how the basolateral polarity protein Scrib regulates the phosphatase PP1 and identify the effectors of this pathway in maintaining the identity of the epithelial cell's lower membrane.
The school
Rutgers University-New Brunswick: 57 labs on PI Pages, $837M a year on research, 713 research doctorates a year.
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