Vanessa Barone - Evolution of mesendoderm patterning in echinoderm embryos

Vanessa Barone,
University of California San Diego / Scripps
Institution of Oceanography

“Evolution of mesendoderm patterning in echinoderm embryos”

Host: Chris Lowe

💡 Vanessa Barone studied molecular biology at the University of Turin, Italy, and then pursued her
Ph.D. in the Carl-Philipp Heisenberg group at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria in
Vienna. There she investigated how cell-cell contacts regulate cell differentiation of
mesendodermal progenitors during zebrafish gastrulation, finding a positive feedback loop between
cell-cell contacts and Nodal signaling that determines cell fate decisions. This opened an evo-devo
question: may regulatory interactions between cell adhesion and cell signaling underlie
evolutionary changes in tissue patterning? To address this question, Vanessa moved to
echinoderm embryos and joined Deirdre Lyons group at the University of California San Diego
where she is using the sea urchin and sea star embryos to investigate the role of cell-cell contacts
in the evolution of mesendodermal tissue patterning.