Developmental Neuroscience
To understand how cells and molecules function in the context of a developing organism, developmental biologists make use of a wide range of techniques, including molecular biology, cell biology, imaging, biochemistry, structural biology, genomics, bioinformatics, evolutionary studies and physiology. This offers the opportunity for many collaborative interactions, including the departments of Biochemistry, Pathology, Genetics, Physiology Development and Neuroscience, Veterinary Medicine,Zoology and the Wellcome Trust Centre for Stem Cell Research. Developmental mechanisms are highly conserved between species, with researchers working on organisms as diverse as Arabidopsis, Caenorhabditis elegans, chick, Drosophila, mouse, Xenopus and zebrafish to study problems such as the genetic and epigenetic bases of pluripotency, the mechanisms underlying cell migration and axon pathfinding and the transcriptional networks involved in the formation of tissues ranging from the testes to the neocortex.