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RESEARCH THEMES
COLLECTIVE CELL BEHAVIOR
Biology is currently dominated by the study of cell and subcellular processes. However, in systems comprised of large numbers of cells (e.g. vertebrate organs), emergent properties arise. Such emergent properties at the supracellular scale have important causal consequences for organ-level morphology as well as for subcellular properties such as gene expression. We are in the process of identifying key aspects and properties at the collective scale that serve critical functional roles in organ development and disease.
SELF-ORGANIZATION
Over the past half-century, the prevailing models used to explain how morphological patterns emerge rely on the role of molecular pre-patterns (e.g. molecular reaction-diffusion or gradients). In such models, cell collectives assemble in response to instructive cues that provide specific positional information. We take a different view that argues for the generative capacity of cellular self-organization and places less burden on the molecular scale for providing patterning “information.” Our aim is to bring this perspective to questions in development and disease that have remained refractory to molecular analysis.
CONCEPTUAL INNOVATION
It is often argued that technological development is a prerequisite for scientific advance. In contrast, we feel that progress is constrained by the conceptual schema that undergird much of biological inquiry. At root, we see a need for a science of life that is not based on machine ontologies (which often go hand in hand with reductionist methodologies). We are developing an organic ontology that sees reciprocal causal relationships and their evolution in time as the principle phenomena of interest in a science of life. Novel organic ontologies coupled with holistic biophysical thinking stand to reveal the ultimate function of genes and molecular processes during morphogenesis.