Speaker: Iain Drummond PhD, Professor and Scientific Director, MDIBL
91¸£Àû the speaker: Iain Drummond received his PhD from UC Berkeley and went on to postdoc at Northwestern University Medical School and University of Chicago working on cell signaling and gene expression. As faculty at Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard Medical School in the 1990’s, Dr. Drummond initiated genetic studies of the zebrafish kidney as part of the large scale zebrafish mutagenesis screen. Over two decades at MGH, his lab established the zebrafish kidney as a model of organ development, disease, and regeneration. His lab identified genes that play key roles in epithelial patterning, ciliogenesis, developmental cell signaling, and kidney morphogenesis. Moving to MDIBL, his lab works on adult kidney stem cells and immune regulation of kidney regeneration in zebrafish.
91¸£Àû the seminar: Zebrafish regenerate their kidneys after damage by activating quiescent kidney stem cells, however the injury signals that activate kidney stem cells are not known. We find that cytokine responses are required and sufficient to induce full kidney regeneration. Acute injury induces cxcl11 expression which is sufficient to induce stem cell aggregation via Fgf expression. A second stage of Wnt-signaling completes kidney stem cell differentiation into functional nephrons. These findings shift our focus on inflammation away from fibrosis and scarring to an examination of the positive, regenerative effects of immune responses to cell and tissue damage.
Please join us for this in person event in 107 Norman Smith Hall.
