Stowers News

Study of tentacle-formation in a sea anemone shows how epithelial cells form elongated structures and puts the spotlight on a new model organism

KANSAS CITY, MO—There’s a new actor on the embryology stage: the starlet sea anemone Nematostella vectensis. Its career is being launched in part by Stowers Institute for Medical Research Associate Investigator Matt Gibson, Ph.D., who is giving it equal billing with what has been his laboratory’s leading player, the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster.

A better “mousetrap” discovered in fruit flies might stop a human cancer-driving kinase in its tracks

KANSAS CITY, MO—A seemingly obscure gene in the female fruit fly that is only active in cells that will become eggs has led researchers at the Stowers Institute for Medical Research to the discovery of a atypical protein that lures, traps, and inactivates the powerful Polo kinase, widely considered the master regulator of cell division. Its human homolog, Polo-like kinase-1 (Plk1), is misregulated in many types of cancer.

Sticky spots on cell membranes hold onto the master regulator of cell polarity, helping to ensure that the regulatory protein accumulates in high enough concentrations to trigger cell polarity.

New paper in Cell Reports finds that one key mechanism in development involves ‘paused’ RNA polymerase

KANSAS CITY, MO –For a tiny embryo to grow into an entire fruit fly, mouse or human, the correct genes in each cell must turn on and off in precisely the right sequence. This intricate molecular dance produces the many parts of the whole creature, from muscles and skin to nerves and blood.