Research in my lab is aimed at understanding how variation in development contributes to normal and abnormal craniofacial development. A major focus of our current work deals with two genetic pathways that are critical to normal jaw development, those regulated by Fgf8 and Satb2. Our goal is to determine how genomic variation at these particular loci relates to variation in the expression of these pathways and how that relates to variation in cell behavior (e.g., proliferation, differentiation) and craniofacial morphogenesis. The ultimate goal of our work is to gain a better understanding of how genotype and emergent properties of development contribute to the variable penetrance of craniofacial disease, as well as evolutionary change.
