In collaboration with the laboratory of Mustafa Khokha, M.D., in the Departments of Pediatrics and Genetics, our laboratory has pioneered the frog as a model for ribosomopathies, the human genetic diseases of making ribosomes. We are particularly interested in craniofacial abnormalities brought on by mutation of nucleolar factors that cause p53 stabilization in cranial neural crest cells (see our papers in PLoS Genetics 2015 and BMC Developmental Biology 2016).
CREDIT: JN Griffin, SB Sondalle, F Del Viso, SJ Baserga, and MK Khokha. 2015. The ribosome biogenesis factor Nol11 is required for optimal rDNA transcription and craniofacial development in Xenopus. PLOS Genetics 11(3): e1005018. doi:10.1371/ journal.pgen.1005018.
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