Thisse's Lab

The main interest of the Thisse Lab is to understand the molecular mechanisms that control the formation of the early vertebrate embryo. The following questions are currently addressed: how molecular signals from maternal or zygotic origins control the fate of early embryonic cells; how these signals interact with each other to define embryonic germ layers and control their regionalization into organs, tissues and cell types; how molecular signals generate organizer activities that control the initial formation of the embryo. Our long term goal is to identify how naïve, early embryonic blastomeres with stem cell properties can be directed toward the formation of complete tissues and organs in a vertebrate organism.