Field of research
Epithelial tissues of the skin, gut or lung form a barrier between the external environment and internal tissues. This exposed position makes epithelia susceptible to injury or cell transformation. My lab investigates how epithelia sense, assess and respond to these perturbations. We utilize approaches from molecular, cell and developmental biology and combine these with the excellent genetic tools and experimental tractability of the Drosophila system to explore these questions in vivo. We specifically investigate how TNF/JNK/AP-1, Cytokine/JAK/STAT and Hippo/Yki signaling pathways orchestrate cell cycle dynamics and survival at sites of tissue damage. We aim to contribute to a tissue-level understanding of wound repair and regeneration, and ultimately to a tissue-level understanding of chronic wound healing pathologies and tumorigenic transformation.
Top three publications
Cosolo A, Jaiswal J, Csordás G, Grass I, Uhlirova M, Classen AK; JNK-dependent cell cycle stalling in G2 promotes survival and senescence-like phenotypes in tissue stress
Elife. 2019. pii: e41036. doi: 10.7554/eLife.41036
La Fortezza M, Grigolon G, Cosolo A, Pinduyrin A, Breimann L, van Steensel B, Classen AK; DamID-profiling of dynamic Polycomb-binding sites in Drosophila imaginal disc development and tumorigenesis
Epigenetics and Chromatin. 2018. 11(1):38. doi: 10.1186/s13072-018-0206-0
La Fortezza M, Schenk M, Cosolo A, Kolybaba A, Grass I, Classen AK; JAK/STAT signalling mediates cell survival in response to tissue stress
Development. 2016. 143(16):2907-19.
