"Round and round: Construction of a molecular corset for tissue elongation during development"

The Horne-Badovinac Lab uses the Drosophila egg chamber as a highly tractable system to investigate the cellular control of organ morphogenesis. Egg chambers are multi-cellular structures within fly ovaries that consist of an inner germ cell cluster surrounded by an epithelial layer of follicle cells. This simple organ's function is to nurture and pattern the oocyte growing within, as each egg chamber will give rise to a single egg. Despite the fact that it is an adult structure, the egg chamber undergoes complex morphogenetic changes that rival those seen in embryos. She is currently investigating how the egg chamber is transformed from a sphere to an ellipsoid as it grows. She is particularly interested in the role that collective cell migration and basement membrane remodeling play in this process. For More information, please visit her lab at: http://shb-lab.org/index.html