Dr. Vanessa Barone studied molecular biology at Università delle Scienze di Torino, Italy and then pursued her PhD in the Carl-Philipp Heisenberg group at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria in Vienna, Austria. There she investigated how cell-cell contacts regulate cell differentiation of mesendodermal progenitors during zebrafish gastrulation, finding a positive feedback loop between cell-cell contacts and Nodal signalling that determines cell fate decisions.

This opened an evo-devo question: may regulatory interactions between cell adhesion and cell signalling underlie evolutionary changes in tissue patterning? To address this question, Dr. Barone moved to echinoderm embryos and joined Deirdre Lyons group at the University of California, San Diego where she established the sea urchin and sea star embryos as comparative model systems to investigate the role of cell-cell contacts in the evolution of mesendodermal tissue patterning.

At Stanford, Dr. Barone will continue to explore how variation in the cell behaviours that determine the shape and physical properties of embryos influence the evolution of development.

The Barone Lab explores how variation in the cell behaviors that determine the physical properties of tissues contribute to the evolution of development. They use marine embryos as model systems.