intercellular junctions, adhesion, desmosomes, adherens junctions, signal transduction, cell motility, skin disease, cadherins, cancer metastasis

Our laboratory is interested in the function and regulation of intercellular junction molecules in desmosomes and adherens junctions that act to mediate cell-cell adhesion and attachment of the cytoskeleton to the cell surface. Defects in junctional components caused by mutation or post-translational modification result in a variety of pathologies ranging from skin and cardiac disease to cancer. In addition, junction-associated molecules are involved in non-junctional functions such as signaling in development and differentiation. The lab uses a multi-faceted approach to dissect the function of cadherins, armadillo and plakin family junction components including but not limited to collaborative atomic structure determinations, molecular genetics, live cell imaging and trangenic mouse approaches.