Dr. William Weis's laboratory studies molecular interactions that underlie the establishment and maintenance of cell and tissue structure. Their principal areas of interest are the architecture and dynamics of intercellular adhesion junctions, signaling pathways that govern cell fate determination, and determinants of cell polarity. The lab also has a long-standing interest in carbohydrate-based cellular recognition and adhesion. They take a strongly reductionist approach to these problems by reconstituting macromolecular assemblies with purified components in order to analyze them using biochemical, biophysical and structural methods. Mechanistic models derived from these studies are tested in cell culture systems.