Model Organisms

[MUSIC PLAYING] We have a large spread of model organisms here from bacteria to fish. A lot of why we study model organisms is really to use genetics to understand how molecular mechanisms are working and then also to really understand how development works. It's really great when you can do rotations in your first year of grad school. You can do rotations in flies, in mice, in cell culture, in zebrafish, in worms. And you really can get all that experience just in your first year. One of the most fascinating aspects of using the zebrafish is that it allows you to answer questions about how does our body develop when we are an embryo, what kind of events fail during disease, and to visualize those events at an organ, cellular, and molecular levels. Well, I do research in C. elegans, so these tiny one-millimeter-long microscopic worms. And I look at the primordial germ cell morphogenesis into germ cells in the developing C. elegans embryo. What's going on in worms could have some similarities to germ cells and other organisms, including mice, and flies, and even humans. The advantage of having a diversity of systems is that you can study related processes in a variety of different contexts. And each system has its own strengths and weaknesses. The research in different labs can feed off of each other. And there are lots of different interactions for cooperation. Work in Progress is a really great opportunity to present your research to not only your fellow graduate students and post-docs, but you also can present in front of the faculty. Every week we have somebody new, a post-doc or grad student, talk at these Works in Progress. And you get feedback from people that are in your field. So you really get a wide spectrum of audience members that can really guide your project and ask questions that maybe you didn't think of yet. One of the big reasons why I came to NYU School of Medicine, besides the fact that the research is so outstanding here, is the fact that everybody when I was interviewing was so friendly. It was just a very warm environment. And I could very easily tell from the people that work here that they all knew each other. And we're having a great time. [MUSIC PLAYING]