Developmental Biology

Tavosanis Lab

Utilizing the classic genetic model organism Drosophila, we study the cellular and molecular mechanisms that support neuronal resilience and dynamics in development and during the animal’s adult life.

Find out more about our research!

We are group of enthusiastic senior and junior researchers at RWTH Aachen University.

See our team and join us!

Lab Updates:

A great manuscript by Anna Ziegler showing how the complex metabolic disbalance of lipid metabolism diseases can be sorted using fly genetics! With new ceramide synthase (CerS) mutants, this manuscript presents an in vivo model of human Progressive Myoclonic Epilepsy type 8 (PME8) in Drosophila. Anna identified the individual alterations caused by the mutations and, using the larval da neurons as a quantitative readout, points to which of those cause defects in the development and maintenance of the nervous system- delineating new paths for therapy research.  Have a good read!

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.10.31.621235v1


Did you know?

Gaia spoke at the joint international meeting of the German (GfE) and Dutch (DSDB) Societies for Developmental Biology, in Osnabrück (12-15 March 2024)

Gaia talked at EMBO Workshop “Principles of dendritic function and computation” in Chania, Greece (21-24 May 2024)

Gaia gave great keynote lecture at the Neurofly meeting in Birmingham! (2-6 September 2024)

Check our latest publications:

Future avenues in Drosophila mushroom body research

Augmin complex activity fine-tunes dendrite morphology through non-centrosomal microtubule nucleation in vivo

https://journals.biologists.com/jcs/article/doi/10.1242/jcs.261512/346505/Augmin-complex-activity-fine-tunes-dendrite

Happened recently:

Gaia’s plenary talk at Neurofly 2024 in Birmingham was a hit!
Neurofly 2024 in Birmingham. The Tavosanis group together.
All hands on deck! We are gearing up for our upcoming student practical course, and we are excited to showcase our skills and knowledge. Let’s make this a memorable experience!

For more lab events click here 🙂