The Marcelle group is interested in understanding how unspecialised mesodermal cells in the embryo become specialised functional skeletal muscle cells. The group addresses those questions using chick and mouse embryos as the model. The researchers study the cellular and molecular mechanisms regulating this cell specialisation using high-end in vivo electroporation and imaging.
Research
The group’s two main aims are to characterise the signalling pathways regulating the initiation of muscle cell formation (myogenesis) in the early embryo and to identify the gene networks underlying muscle cell fusion, which leads to the formation of multinucleated muscle fibres.
