Head formation of clawed frog embryos
Friday, July 11, 2014 - 07:00
in Biology & Nature
On July 9, 2014, Dr. Yuuri Yasuoka in the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University's Marine Genomics Unit, published a research paper explaining a key mechanism in formation of the head in frogs. The work was done in collaboration with researchers at the University of Tokyo. Previous studies had reported genes involved in head development. However, it still remained unclear how those genes interact with each other for head formation as a whole. By employing Next-Generation sequencing techniques, which provide scientists with massive amounts of DNA sequence data, Dr. Yasuoka has uncovered a genetic mechanism underlying head formation, which is one of the most important processes in animal development.