Garcia Lab
Principal Investigator: Hernan Gustavo Garcia
Institution: University of California, Berkeley (Berkeley, CA)
Primary Subfield: Molecular & Cell Bio
Recruitment Status: ✅ Accepting PhD Students ✅ Hiring Postdocs
Research Focus
Project summary/abstract The correct implementation of developmental programs depends on information encoded in an organism’s DNA. Mutations in these regions that control genes have been shown to be responsible for ailments such as developmental defects and cancer. While great progress has been made in mapping these regulatory regions and uncovering how their target genes interact with each other, it is still not possible to precisely predict patterns of gene expression in space and time from knowledge of the DNA regulatory sequence of multicellular organisms. The overarching goal of the proposed work is to leverage knowledge about these regulatory regions and the transcription factors that bind to them in order to reach a predictive understanding of the developmental program of the early embryo of the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster. Armed with recent innovations in (1) theoretical models that predict the mean and variability in gene expression as a function of regulatory sequence and input transcription factor concentration dynamics, and (2) technology to visualize and quantify transcriptional initiation in real time in live, single cells in a fruit fly embryo, the proposed inv…
Active NIH Awards
- 5R35GM158200-02: Physical Biology of Transcriptional Control in Embryonic Development (2026)
- 1R35GM158200-01: Physical Biology of Transcriptional Control in Embryonic Development (2025)
- 5R01GM139913-04: Predictive understanding of the temporal control of transcription in Drosophila development (2024)
- 1R01GM152815-01: In vivo mechanisms of Dorsal-mediated transcriptional control in development (2024)
Explore 700+ US Biology Labs on FindBioLabs.com