Systems Biology of Stem Cells and Human Developmental Disorders–The Calof lab takes a systems biology approach to address questions in development, regeneration, and tissue homeostasis. We also work on vertebrate animal model systems to understand the etiology of human genetic diseases that affect development and function, especially of the cardiovascular/pulmonary system and nervous system.
Among the questions we are addressing are: How can we use genomic, genetic, and computational approaches together to gain insights into the behaviors of endogenous stem cells during development and regeneration of epithelia, particularly neural (sensory) epithelia? How do undkerstand mechanistically the ways in which combinatorial actions of gene expression changes result in developmental phenotypes observed in birth defects disorders such as Cornelia de Lange Syndrome (e.g. heart defects, autism)? How do such gene expression changes lead to cell lineage misallocation and consolidation of structural birth defects?