I am a second year Ph.D. Student. I did my masters in Maxim Plikus's Lab at University of California, Irvine. I joined the Atit lab because I wanted to work in craniofacial development. I am a big fan of chondrocytes. I am brining my knowledge of chondrocytes and their ability to condense so they can grow in a polarized and directional way to the problem of how skull bone osteoblasts expand to cover the head.
My Project
I am on the #Walking heads team. I am working on developing my project around the early events in calvarial osteoblasts organization in the primordia before they expand to cover the head.
Embryonic calvarial primordia emerge as a foci of mesenchyme cells above the eye (green). They change their shape and condense before rapidly expanding apically to cover the head. How are these processes initiated?