Jim Smith

Wellcome Trust
Cancer Research UK Gurdon Institute and Department of Zoology
University of Cambridge
Tennis Court Road
Cambridge CB2 1QN, UK
Group Homepage

Jim Smith's group is interested in the formation of the mesoderm of the vertebrate embryo. They use two frog species, Xenopus laevis and Xenopus tropicalis, and the zebrafish, Danio rerio as model organisms.  The group focuses particularly on the T-box family of transcription factors, which are both necessary and, when  mis-expressed, sufficient for mesoderm formation. In his current work he is using ChIP-Seq to identify targets of the T-box genes in an effort to construct a T-box genetic regulatory network.