Luc Leyns
Position: Assistant Professor from 1998
Project summary
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Have (some) ideas
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Find the money for it (and associated administrative tasks)
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Manage the lab
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Teach to biology and bio-engineering students
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Be involved in the department/faculty management
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Kelly Kemp
Position: PhD student 2000-2005 - Postdoc from 1/2006-
Project summary
Several members of the Wnt family of secreted growth factors,
including Wnt1, are expressed in the CNS of the developing
mouse embryo. The canonical Wnt pathway has previoulsy been
shown to have a proliferative role in brain development.
Using conditional transgenesis, Wnt1 will be overexpressed
in the CNS to further elucidate the possible patterning roles
of canonical Wnts during brain development.
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Erik Willems
Position: PhD student 2002-
Project summary
By adding different growth factors to the culturing medium,
Embryonic Stem (ES) cells have the potential to differentiate
into specific cell types similar to the way it occurs in
the developing embryo.
My work focuses on the mimicking of
the mouse embryo signaling involved in mesoderm induction
applied to ES cells. The roles of ActA, Nodal, Wnts, BMP4
and FGF in this process are studied.
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Danuta Wawrzak
Position: PhD student 2002-
Project summary
The Wnts are crucial cell signaling molecules during development.
Though they have been studied for more than twenty years,
some of them are still poorly characterized. Therefore, we
are studying the expression patterns of several Wnts during
mouse embryogenesis.
Importantly, the expression of Wnt genes, as well as their
antagonists, sFRPs, in a specific pattern during development
does not necessary prove that the respective proteins actually
interact with each other. Therefore, we are currently addressing
a characterization of the interactions at a biochemical and
a cellular level of available Wnts with sFRPs proteins.
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Mourad Metioui
Position: Postdoc 2002-2006
Project summary
Biochemical characterization of the Wnt proteins and their
interation with the secreted antagonists (sFRP & Frzb) as
well as with the Wnt receptors Frizzled.
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Joris Verheyde
Position: PhD student 2002-
Project summary
The developing brain is particular sensitive to ionizing
radiation. In the process of irradiation, neuronal cells
are damaged with activation of a cascade of intracellular
events.
To define the underlying molecular mechanisms of
early irradiation, high-throughput transcriptional analysis
tools -such as microarray and rt-qPCR- are applied. As such,
the global modulated gene expression levels can be analyzed,
and the involvement of new genes can be evaluated.
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Denis Piette
Position: PhD student 2003-
Project summary
The genes and pathways regulating limb development are highly
conserved in all living tetrapods. One particular set of
genes at work during limb development are the HoxA genes.
They play a crucial role in shaping the future limb.
Their specific function could be better understood if more
was known about the way these genes are regulated. The goal
of this project is to determine the cis-regulating elements
that are responsible for HoxA expression in the developping
limb.
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Morgane Thomas-Chollier
Position: PhD student 2004-
Project summary
Posterior Hox genes from complex A and D play a key role
in the development of the tetrapod limb. How is the expression
of Hox genes differentially regulated in animals with/without
limbs or that have lost their limbs during evolution ?
By
conducting in silico comparative genomic analysis in
these organisms, the aim of this project is to predict regulatory
regions of Hox genes and other members of the network controlling
limbs development.
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Marijke Hendricks
Position: PhD student 2004-
Project summary
Many pathways and signaling factors are involved in the
development of the nervous system, but it is not clear they
interact and how the nervous system is patterned.
My work
focuses on the very early stages of neural induction. The
role of Wnt-, BMP- and Nodal- antagonizing molecules as well
as FGF and EGF in this process is studied. Embryonic stem
cells as well as embryo explants are used as model systems.
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Amaia Marcilla-Etxenike
Position: PhD student 2006-
Project summary
Borello et al. (1999) showed that Frzb-1 overexpression
causes a marked reduction in size of caudal structures but
also affect the development of the brain.
We plan to study the specific effects of Frzb overexpression
on the patterning of the central nervous system while taking
into account the apoptosis rate and cell proliferation rate.
The first part in this project is the study of the overexpression
of Frzb in the Wnt-1 expression domain and the second part
is the study of the roles of Frzb-1 during the differentiation
of the embryonic stem
cells.
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Ann Pauwels
Position: Lab Technicien
Project summary
Lab management and technical support.
Techniques: PCR genotyping, sequencing, genome walking,
whole-mount in
situ hybridization,
sectionning, ...
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