Mark's Project

Analysis of BMP regulated Smads

Mark's project involves the analysis of the Bone Morphogenic Protein (BMP) regulated Smads. Mice that lack Smad1 die due to a defect in their allantois, which is a tissue used to store embryonic waste products. However, Mark has shown that embryos that lack one copy of Smad1 often suffer developmental abnormalities, including the nervous system defect shown. This clearly involves the overgrowth of the nervous tissue, as well as an abnormal organization, as seen on the histological sections. Studies of cell proliferation, like the one shown, suggests that this phenotype results in part from overproliferation of cells in the dorsal neural tube. Mark is conducting an analysis of gene expression to determine the mechanism of this abnormal proliferation. In addition, he has generated a mouse mutant that lacks the closely related Smad8 gene.