We are always brainstorming for ideas to understand how cells make their cell fate choices! You are welcome to visit us at our lab meetings to get a sense what we are trying to accomplish and how we plan to do that. We hold our lab meetings in Amistad 237A at 12:30pm on Fridays.
Some example rotation projects:
- Watch a somatic cell transitioning into an induced pluripotent stem cell -- see what additional feature(s) you can spot during this amazing change!
- Watch a normal blood cell transform into a leukemia cell. We have established systems where all blood cells can express an experimentally controlled oncogene, but only a minority of these cells become leukemic. What makes the oncogene work in one cell but fail in another?
- Try out some designs to make a cell cycle speed reporter. Such a reporter would be very helpful since the fast cycling cells change their cell fate more easily.
- Try out some tricks to sway the fate decision of hematopoietic stem cells.