Buzz Baum

LMCB, Department of Cell & Developmental Biology, UCL Email: b.baum@ucl.ac.uk 1989 - BA Biochemistry, St. Catherine's College, Oxford 1993 - PhD, with Paul Nurse at Cancer Research UK 1997 - EMBO Fellow with Norbert Perrimon, Harvard Medical School 1998 - HFSP Fellow with Norbert Perrimon, Harvard Medical School 2000 - HHMI Fellow with Norbert Perrimon, Harvard Medical School 2001 - Royal Society URF at UCL and Group Leader at the UCL branch of the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research 2007 - Reader, MRC Laboratory for Cell Biology, Cell Biology Unit,and the Department of Anatomy, UCL.     Visit our lab Website

Group Members

Pato Kunda ,Eliana Marinari, Jennifer Rohn, RemiGio Picone - The gang - click for the video

Morphogenesis: the molecular and cellular mechanisms that control cell and tissue morphogenesis during normal development and in cancer.

Most manufactured objects are designed from the top down. By contrast, the beautiful forms we see in animals in Nature are generated from the bottom up, as a simple fertilised egg develops into a complex mature animal. We are interested in the molecular and cellular processes that drive this process of morphogenesis. During morphogenesis, a dynamic network of filamentous polymers constructed from actin monomers generates many of the forces required to induce coordinated changes in the form and arrangement of individual cells to shape the developing embryo. Actin filaments do this by acting as a dynamic scaffold upon which molecular motors can move, and by using energy derived from ATP hydrolysis to push and pull on cell membranes. In the lab, we use a combination of classical genetics, RNAi and cell biological techniques in Drosophila to identify the genes that control actin dynamics at specific sites within cell, and to elucidate the cell biological processes through which these gene orchestrate cell and tissue morphogenesis during normal development and under conditions that mimic those of tumour development.Over the past few years we have developed a number of novel tools that enable us to achieve these goals. First, we improved fly cell culture methods (Cherbas and Baum, 2007) and pioneered the use of functional genomic RNAi screens in cell culture as a genetic system in which to identify the genes controlling the generation of cell form (Kiger et al., 2003; Baum and Craig, 2004). Using this approach, we then worked together with Amy Kiger, Frieder Schöck and Norbert Perrimon to complete the first genome-wide RNAi screen for genes controlling cell morphology.

Second, given the data handling problems involved in gaining meaningful biological information from large complex datasets like this one, we developed a database and computational tools that make it simple for biologists to cross-correlate and integrate large-scale genomic, phenotypic, gene expression and two-hybrid data sets (Sims et al., 2006). This is now publicly accessible over the web: http://flight.licr.org/.

Third, we have developed a novel in vivo system that enables us to combine excellent genetics and live cell imaging. We are currently using this system to functionally analyse novel hits from the large-scale RNAi screen, to study epithelial morphogenesis and to look at the very first steps in the evolution of a metastatic tumour.

Our lab also collaborates with that of Rachel McKendry at the London Centre for Nanotechnology (http://www.london-nano.com/content/lcndirectory/mckendry/). Using biophysical techniques including micropatterning and atomic force microscopy, we seek to understand the forces and mechanical properties underlying morphogenetic changes, as well as to investigate the influence of cell shape and cell polarity on cytoskeletal organisation.

Finally, we have recently expanded our morphogenesis studies into human cells. Several factors make RNAi in mammalian cell culture an attractive complementary model system. First, the arsenal of well-studied mammalian cell lines and primary cell culture systems allows sophisticated cell biological assays that are impossible in the fly system. Second, the reagents assembled over previous decades allow cell biological and biochemical analysis to be taken much further in mammalian cell lines. Third, the results obtained in mammalian cell culture can be translated more easily into an understanding of human disease, leading to the development of novel therapeutic strategies.

Over the next 5-10 years, we aim to exploit our position at the interface between the fields of cell biology, cancer cell biology, developmental biology and systems biology to identify and characterise the set of actin regulators that guide the construction of the different macroscopic actin-based structures in different cell types and a different stages in the cell cycle to control morphogenesis in animals.

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This page last modified 18 January, 2010 by LMCB Webmaster.