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Studying Cell Movement
Studying Cell Movement
Shane Hutson, assistant professor of physics at Vanderbilt University and fellow with the Vanderbilt Institute for Integrative Biosystem Research and Education, received a five-year, $833,000 Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program award from the National Science Foundation to support his studies of the underlying mechanisms that drive the movement in the development of fruit fly embryos.
The vital process that transforms the identical cells in a fertilized egg into a multi-cellular embryo with a complicated shape and dozens of different cell types involves a surprising amount of movement: As development proceeds, cells move here and there in a complex choreography for reasons that largely remain mysterious. Hutson is one of a small group of researchers who are studying the nature of the forces that cause these cell movements. To learn more about Hutson's research, see the Vanderbilt University news and features story, "Study Provides New Insights Into How Lasers Cut Living Tissue." (Date of Image: 2006)
Credit: Daniel Dubois, Vanderbilt University
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