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Faculty
Marty Shankland
Professor in Molecular Cell & Developmental Biology

Email: hastypig@mail.utexas.edu
Website
Main Office: PAT 602
Phone: 232-1892

Alternate Office: PAT 612-615
Alt. Phone: 232-2348

Mailing Address
The University of Texas at Austin
1 University Station C1000
24th & Speedway
Austin ,TX 78712-1095
Marty Shankland

Research Summary

Our lab investigates the cellular events that underlie the spatial patterning of embryonic body plans, and the way those pattern-forming mechanisms have evolved during the diversification of multicellular animals. We are particularly interested in the superphylum Lophotrochozoa, a large group of invertebrate animals whose embryos show a unique and highly conserved pattern of development known as spiral cleavage. We discovered a gene, PaxBeta, that plays a critical role in the spiral cleavage program of the leech Helobdella, and have shown that this gene arose via gene duplication at or near the base of the lophotrochozoan tree. Current projects include analyzing the molecular mechanism by which PaxBeta regulates the cleavage geometry of the leech embryos, and comparative studies in other species aimed at determining whether this regulation is an ancient and recently derived feature of the PaxBeta gene family. Ther is also another, unrelated project that looks at the rapid evolution of dorsoventral patterning mechanisms among annelids (segmented worms).