The main goal of the Giraldez Laboratory is to understand the cellular and molecular signals that initiate embryonic development to uncover universal principles that direct the development of a new life.
A universal step in all animals is the maternal to zygotic transition, whereby the transcriptionally silent egg activates the new zygotic program and removes the old maternal program. This central step in animal development can be considered the beginning of life from a transcriptional standpoint, whereby subsequent developmental decisions will depend on the correct activation of the zygotic program and regulation of the previous maternal program.
The questions: How the vertebrate embryo activate the silent zygotic genome? How does the embryo regulate the previous developmental program? How do the building blocks in the genome, coding and non-coding elements, orchestrate these processes?
The approaches: We have a multidisciplinary infrastructure (wet/dry) that allows us to combine genomics, embryology, biochemistry and computational biology to leverage the powerful genetics in zebrafish to understand vertebrate development.
The Giraldez Lab is part of the Yale Combined Program in the Biological and Biomedical Sciences (BBS). Interested students should send Antonio an e-mail to arrange a meeting.