David Eisenmann

Biography

I received my training in the fields of Genetics and Developmental Biology and I am fascinated by the process of development. I teach in both of these areas and have a lab studying development in the invertebrate model organism C. elegans. I also serve as Undergraduate Program Director for the Department of Biological Sciences

Research Interest

My laboratory studies animal developmental biology, in particular we are interested in the process of cell fate specification - how newly born cells know what fate to adopt during development. We focus on two types of skin cells that arise during development in the invertebrate model system, the nematode worm C. elegans. We have studied the regulation of gene expression downstream of the Wnt signaling pathway in the lateral seam cells and ventral vulval precursor cells in this animal. More recently we have been examining 1) pax-3, a gene that regulates the choice between these two cell types during embryogenesis, and 2) the temporal co-regulation of a large set of genes in these hypodermal cells during larval life.