Positions available

We are hiring !!!

We are looking for postdocs with expertise in fly genetics, neurobiology, microscopy!!!

Morphology of dendrites in neurons
A major focus of the lab is on branching morphogenesis, using Drosophila dendritic arborization neurons as a model system. These cells lie just under the larval cuticle and the dendrites of the class IV cells branch and grow rapidly so that they contain over 1000 branches by the end of larval development. This is a fantastic system for advanced microscopy, which is an area of expertise of the lab. The microtubule cytoskeleton, another area of expertise in the lab, play a key role in morphogenesis, based on knockdowns and mutational analysis. We have made a number of very interesting discoveries including: (i) The arbors form by a highly stochastic branching, growth and retraction mechanism, which we have shown by modeling to account for many aspects of the morphology (Shree et al. 2022). (ii) The diameters of the branches in the network narrow in a systematic way from the cell body to the dendrite tips, supporting our idea that the geometry of the arbor optimizes the supply of nutrients throughout the arbor (Liao et al. 2021). (iii) The topology of the dendrite networks has interesting scaling properties do to dendrite density constraints (Liao et al. 2023). Currently we are quantifying the effects of knocking down microtubule-associated proteins on morphology, and at the same time pushing the imaging do that we can see individual proteins to test their role in dendrite growth (Liao, 2022). We are looking for postdocs with expertise in fly genetics, neurobiology, microscopy. Graduate students with all backgrounds are welcome to join the project!
 
Please e-mail your CV, a summary of your current research, a short statement on why you are interested in a particular projects, and the names of two references to jonathon.howard@yale.edu