“Polyploidy and Aneuploidy in Organ Development”

My laboratory’s core focus is the biology of whole genome duplication, or polyploidy. Polyploidy was described shortly after the discovery of chromosomes, yet we still know little about its functions. Endopolyploid cells (polyploid cells in otherwise diploid organisms) are present in many human organs such as the heart and liver, and are present in increased proportions when these organs suffer injury. Further, recent sequencing of ~4,000 human tumors found polyploidy is an incredibly common event, supporting the hypothesis that polyploidy contributes to genome instability in diverse cancers. Intrigued by its frequent yet poorly understood occurrence in repairing and genomically unstable tissues, we developed the Drosophila hindgut as a genetically accessible tissue model to discover new, in vivo-relevant functions/mechanisms of polyploidy. Specifically, we study how polyploidy alters the genome during organ development, and the role of polyploidy in organ repair.