Book Description
The adult Drosophila intestinal epithelium hosts a heterogenous cell population including a pool of actively proliferating stem cells known as intestinal stem cells (ISCs), intermediate daughter cell type enteroblasts (EBs) and two differentiated cell types, enterocytes (ECs) and enteroendocrine cells (ee). Being able to adapt to rapid environmental changes through tightly controlled programs of cell proliferation and differentiation, the adult intestine serves as an excellent model system to study stem cell mediated tissue homeostasis. The underlying molecular mechanisms that mediate stem cell proliferation, differentiation and maintenance are poorly understood, in part because of a lack of available tools to spatially manipulate gene expression in this tissue. Previous work from our lab has shown that RNA Binding Protein (RBP) mediated post transcriptional gene regulatory mechanisms in the cytoplasm are key to maintain stem cell functions and behaviors. My work aimed to investigate nuclear RBP mediated post transcriptional gene regulatory mechanisms in intestinal progenitors (ISCs and EBs) and generate genetic tools to manipulate gene expression based on intestinal cell type and regional identities.