Cellular Death & Stress Responses

BIOGRAPHY

Interests: regulation of gene expression, signal transduction, apoptosis and survival signalling, phosphatidylinositol 3' kinase signalling, protein kinases and inhibitors, microarray and functional genomic technologies, oncogenes and cancer biology.

My group has a long held interest in the signaling pathways that impact gene expression. We've primarily been studying stress responses via the MAP kinase systems, elements of the Wingless pathway in Drosophila and mammals and the phosphatidyl 3'kinase pathway in flies and mice. As signalling pathways become ever more complex, defining the physiologically relevant targets and components becomes more critical. Fortunately, these pathways are highly conserved facilitating the combination of genetically tractable organisms and comparative biology.

We're also actively embracing functional genomics technologies such as microarrays of genes, oligos, proteins and cells to apply a systems biology approach to understanding the interactions and interdependencies between the intracellular wiring circuits. Being within a cancer hospital, this approach allows incorporation of primary tumour material into our work to better validate cell culture and transgenic mouse models.