Research Groups

Currie Group

A combination of genetic and embryological amenability has placed zebrafish at the forefront of attempts to understand how genes function to control vertebrate development. The optical transparency of the zebrafish embryo provides the ability to visualise every cell in the forming embryo by simple optical inspection as well as enabling the use of a host of cell labeling and transgenic approaches to dissect embryonic development. Furthermore the large-scale mutagenesis of the zebrafish genome has also produced many different classes of mutations which disrupt gene function. We use the many advantages of zebrafish embryology to dissect molecular mechanisms that act to pattern the vertebrate embryo. In particular we are interested in how specific muscle cell types are determined within the developing embryo.