Our goal is to understand the fitness and potential of stem cells to fuel various cell lineages in different organs. We use organoids to understand how cues from different stem cell niches impact that fitness and potential.
We study how genetic changes that accumulated over the last 6 million years of human evolution influence specialized features of brain development using single cell genomics, cerebral organoid models of ape brain development, and genome engineering.
We study how the different cell types in the liver, in particular the hepatocyte, are generated during development, patterned and maintained during adulthood, and regenerate after injury.
