Meyer Lab

Cells make use of an elaborate control system that integrates inputs from multiple receptors, computes this information and makes decisions about key cellular outputs such as cell migration, synapse formation, differentiation or proliferation. Our laboratory is focusing on discovering the rules that govern these decision processes by perturbing signaling steps, by monitoring signaling events and cell functions, and by employing mathematical modeling. We have already developed a number of novel biosensors and microscopy techniques to monitor cell signaling and functional processes over time, developed novel chemically induced enzyme activities for rapid signaling pathway perturbations and created a set of 2300 RNAi's to perturb signaling pathways by selectively reducing the expression of most human signaling proteins.

We are particularly intrigued by the roles of calcium and lipid second messengers in the spatial and temporal coordination of cellular responses and a main current focus of the laboratory is on the questions how migrating cells polarize and chemotax and how neurons polarize their axons and dendrites and regulate their synapse number. While these studies focus on understanding specific control circuits, we are also working towards solving what is arguably the ultimate systems biology problem: How can a cells entire control system be quantitatively modeled? The experimental part of these studies makes use of genome-wide perturbations and monitoring multiple cellular decision points such as those triggering cell proliferation and differentiation. Our ultimate goals are to determine what elements of cellular control systems enable them to make specific decisions while being robust, how control systems have evolved, how we can synthetically create novel regulatory functions in existing control systems and how we can predict from mathematical models of signaling systems suitable molecular targets for therapeutic intervention.