RESEARCH
It's an exciting time at the Bier Lab! We have been forging ahead with great energy on our research, focusing on three integrated areas: 1) Active Genetics, a new CRISPR based methodology developed in the lab that can be used to create gene-drive elements to combat vector borne diseases and to aid in large-scale combinatorial genome engineering, 2) Developmental Patterning, analyzing the mechanisms by which morphogen gradients that initiate patterning are linked to morphogenesis of embryonic and adult structures in fruit flies, and 3) Human Disease Mechanisms, using fruit flies to model human disease such as those caused by barrier disruptive toxins produced by bacteria causing anthrax and cholera.
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Active Genetics/ Gene Drives
The binary CRISPR genome editing system comprising of the Cas9 endonuclease and a guide RNA (gRNA) can be programmed to generate double stranded DNA breaks at virtually any location in the genome. When these components are inserted into the genome at the site where the Cas9/gRNA complex directs cleavage, elements carrying these components can be copied efficiently to the companion chromosome and passed on via the germline to nearly all offspring. The myriad of possible applications and implications of this fundamentally new form of genetics that bypasses the traditional constraints of Mendelian inheritance are reviewed in (Gantz and Bier, 2016).
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A great video from kurzgesagt describing the technology developed in a collaborative effort between the Bier lab and Anthony James from UC Irvine.
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Developmental Patterning
The overarching theme of our developmental studies is to understand how secreted factors in the Bone Morphogenetic Protein (BMP) pathway contribute to developmental patterning along the dorsal ventral axis in embryos (reviewed in Bier and De Robertis, 2015) and how BMP patterning in the wing imaginal disc creates a nested pattern of gene expression domains that induce wing vein formation along their boundaries (reviewed in Bier, 2000). Read more...
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Human Disease Mechanisms
We have led efforts to develop Drosophila as a model system for analyzing the function of human disease genes and then validating these results in vertebrate models, which we refer to as “closing-the-loop” (reviewed in Bier, 2005; Bier and Guichard, 2012). Read more...
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