Kenji Sugioka

 Our life begins with a single-cell, fertilized egg, that divides to form 37.2 trillion cells consisting of our body. In the course of cell proliferation, timing and angle of cell division need to be orchestrated to shape tissues and organs. Despite its significance in development and disease, it is unclear how environmental signals and cell-cell communications precisely pattern cell division.

 Sugioka lab studies the developmental patterning of cell division using simple multicellular model C. elegans embryos. C. elegans has only 959 somatic cells yet is complex enough to develop different tissues and organs. Remarkably, they have invariant cell division dynamics among individuals, thereby allowing quantitative and single-cell level analysis of cell division in multicellular system. We will employ live-imaging, molecular biology, genetics, and tissue engineering to uncover fundamental rules underlying the developmental control of cell division. More specifically, we are interested in the following topics:

• Causal relationships between extrinsic and intrinsic cues and cell division patterns
• Molecular basis underlying the symmetry-breaking of cell division
• Cell cycle coordination that orchestrates organogenesis