Date/Time
March 24, 2016 (Thu), 15:00-16:00
Place
2F Seminar room, BioSystems building
Speaker
Prof. Georg Halder (VIB Center for the Biology of Disease and KU Leuven Center for Human Genetics, University of Leuven, Belgium)
Title
The Hippo pathway in Organ Growth Control and Regeneration
Abstract
Organs and tissues grow to specific sizes but the mechanisms that control organ size have remained mysterious. The Hippo pathway is a conserved growth control pathway and defects in Hippo signaling cause dramatic overgrowth phenotypes of various organs in mice and in flies. The Hippo pathway is also involved in regeneration in flies and mammals and it is frequently deregulated in human tumors. The Hippo pathway is thus a key regulator of tissue growth and its regulation may dictate organ size. However, how the Hippo pathway is regulated during development and what role it plays during normal growth and regeneration is poorly understood. In our laboratory, we are using genetic approaches in Drosophila and in mice to unravel the function of the Hippo pathway and to dissect its regulation during organ growth control. I will present our recent efforts towards these aims and discuss our findings in light of different growth control models.