The diversity of animals on our planet is quite amazing, and this even more amazing knowing that many of the molecular mechanisms underlying development are highly conserved. We are investigating the molecular processes of animal development first to identify the components comprising the pathways directing development and second to understand how these conserved mechanisms give rise to such different animals. We use several model organisms in our studies, the fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster, the beetle, Tribolium castaneum and recently the zebrafish, Danio rerio. We focus on the mechanisms of hox gene control of body patterning. Much of our work relies on mutational analysis of gene function. For this (and other reasons) we fondly refer to our lab as,

“The laboratory of Arrested Development”