Faculty Profile
Address
630 W 168 St
VC-12, 230
New York, NY 10032
Phone. 212-342-1975 (lab)
Fax. 212-322-1975
Education and Training |
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| Ph.D. | 1998 | Cambridge University, UK |
Affiliations
College of Dental Medicine, Section of Hospital Dentistry
| Srikala Raghavan , PhD Assistant Professor |
Research
Summary
My laboratory studies the role of ß1-containing integrins in basement membrane organization. In the mammalian epidermis cell-cell adhesion, cell migration and basement membrane (BM) assembly and organization are central to many biological and pathological processes. Recent genetic and cell-biological studies and an elegant blend of classical and reverse genetics have illustrated the importance of basement membrane architecture and its cellular interactions in organogenesis of the epidermis and hair follicle, wound healing, tumorigenesis and skin blistering disorders. While important roles of basement membrane during development, such as establishing cellular polarity, promoting cell adhesion and cell survival have recently been elucidated, less is known about the dynamics of basement membrane assembly in vivo. The objective of our proposed study is to investigate how the different epithelial integrins and their downstream signaling effectors regulate the process of basement membrane assembly/organization and cell-substratum adhesion. Previously we generated the conditional knockout (KO) of integrin ß1 in the epidermis and oral mucosa and successfully established the ß1 KO cells in culture. This provides us with a unique model system, which will be used to specifically address the role of ß1 and the other compensatory epithelial integrins in these important cellular processes.
Selected Publications
1. S. Raghavan, C. Bauer, G. Mundschau, Q Li and E. Fuchs (2000). Conditional ablation of beta 1 integrin in skin. Severe defects in epidermal proliferation, basement membrane formation, and hair follicle invagination. Journal of Cell Biology, 150(5): 1149-60.
2. E. Fuchs, S. Raghavan (2002). Getting under the skin of epidermal morphogenesis. Nature Review Genetics, 3(3): 199-209.
3. S. Raghavan, A. Vaezi and E. Fuchs (2003). A role for ß1 integrins in focal adhesion function and polarized cytoskeletal dynamics. Developmental Cell, 5(3): 415-427.