Robert E. Steele
Biological Chemistry, School of Medicine
Phone: (949) 824-7341
Email: resteele@uci.edu
http://www.ucihs.uci.edu/biochem/faculty/steele.html
http://www.faculty.uci.edu/profile.cfm?faculty_id=2387
Robert Steele
The Steele lab is using the simple animal Hydra as a model system for exploring the molecular circuits underlying the biology of stem cells and epithelial cells. They are making use of genes identified in the Hydra Genome Project (on which Dr. Steele is a PI) and recently developed methods for making transgenic Hydra to generate Hydra lines that have perturbations in pathways involved in stem and epithelial cell behavior. These lines will provide insights into aspects of stem and epithelial cell biology relevant to cancer. Dr. Steele has recently been collaborating with the Chamberlin lab on a chemical genetic screen using Hydra. This screen is being carried out with the goal of identifying compounds that perturb processes in Hydra relevant to cancer.
Selected Publications:
Steele, R. E. (2002). Developmental signaling in Hydra: what does it take to build a "simple" animal? Dev Biol 248(2), 199-219.
Technau, U., Miller, M. A., Bridge, D., and Steele, R. E. (2003). Arrested apoptosis of nurse cells during Hydra oogenesis and embryogenesis. Dev Biol 260(1), 191-206.
Steele, R. E., Hampson, S. E., Stover, N. A., Kibler, D. F., and Bode, H. R. (2004). Probable horizontal transfer of a gene between a protist and a cnidarian. Curr Biol 14(8), R298-9.
Chourrout, D., Delsuc, F., Chourrout, P., Edvardsen, R. B., Rentzsch, F., Renfer, E., Jensen, M. F., Zhu, B., de Jong, P., Steele, R. E., and Technau, U. (2006). Minimal ProtoHox cluster inferred from bilaterian and cnidarian Hox complements. Nature 442(7103), 684-687.
Putnam, N. H., Srivastava, M., Hellsten, U., Dirks, B., Chapman, J., Salamov, A., Terry, A., Shapiro, H., Lindquist, E., Kapitonov, V. V., Jurka, J., Genikhovich, G., Grigoriev, I. V., Lucas, S. M., Steele, R. E., Finnerty, J. R., Technau, U., Martindale, M. Q., and Rokhsar, D. S. (2007). Sea anemone genome reveals ancestral eumetazoan gene repertoire and genomic organization. Science 317(5834), 86-94. |
