Our team quantitatively studies cell-fate decisions and the regulation of timing during development in the model organism C. elegans in order to reveal evolutionary conserved principles of patterning in metazoan development. Our interdisciplinary approach relies on a combination of areas of expertise of the group:
(i) Large-scale quantitative live-imaging capturing relevant gene expression and protein dynamics as well as developmental phenotypes (i.e. cell-lineages)
(ii) Cutting-edge microfluidics technologies for high-resolution long-term live-imaging on-chip;
(iii) State-of-the-art genome editing tools to generate live reporter strains and mutants;
(iv) Software tools for automated high-throughput analyses of developmental phenotypes;
(v) Mathematical modeling of gene expression dynamics and cell-fate decisions processes, making quantitative predictions that are testable in experiments.