Mission

Asymmetric cell division and differentiation of cells are the keys to form a multicellular organism from a single cell. Caenorhabditis elegans provides us great tools to disect the molecular mechanisms of these events genetically and to visually track cells at single-cell resolution during development. We are particularly interested in the role of the ancient nuclear receptor family NR5A, also called SF-1/LRH-1 in mammals, Ftz-F1 in invertebrates, amphibians, reptiles and fish, and NHR-25 in C. elegans, in cell differentiation and interaction with other important signaling cascades such as Wnt/ß-catenin, Runx, Ras pathways.