Development, Stem Cells and Regeneration
DRB 207
Subject & Catalog Number
Course Information
Description
This class is evenly divided between lectures and conference sessions which cover the principals that guide vertebrate development and stem cell maintenance in various renewing tissues; in addition, we discuss how these principals can be leveraged to generate cells/tissues for regenerative biology or disease modeling in vitro. Specific topics include a molecular dissection of the signaling pathways, gene regulatory networks, and epigenetic mechanisms that control primary axis formation and regional specification, establishment of cell fate, homeotic genes and patterning, cell migration and cell-cell signaling, organoid models of nervous system development and their application, axon development and regeneration, neuromuscular development and mechanistic insights for human birth defects, cardiac development, skeletal muscle stem cells in aging and disease, morphogenesis of branched tubular systems, vasculogenesis, biomechanical regulation of developmental processes, skeletal patterning and development, stem cell maintenance in various renewing tissues, germ cells and pluripotency, and directed differentiation of ES and iPS cells for regeneration and disease modeling. We will discuss how state of the art technologies in iPS organoids, cell lineage labeling, genetic manipulation, and genome wide epigenomic/transcriptomic analyses can be employed to study organ development, stem cells and regeneration.
Students employ the knowledge gained by lectures and conference sessions to identify interesting new research goals in either vertebrate development, stem cell, or regenerative biology and present research proposals to achieve these goals. Thus, the goals of this course are for students to both learn about the molecular tool-kit that evolution has endowed to vertebrates (and other multicellular animals) AND to learn how to synthesize the literature to come up with their own novel research ideas, and develop a strategy to investigate their hypotheses.
Course website: https://cb207.hms.harvard.edu/
Course Notes
This course is offered as CELLBIO207 and also as DRB207. Includes lectures and conference sessions in which original literature is discussed in depth. A short research proposal is required in lieu of exams.
Class Notes
Meeting Location: WAB 563
Recommended Prep
Introductory graduate-level courses in both Cell and Molecular Biology.
Available for Harvard Cross Registration
