My long-term interest is to understand the principles allowing cells to process information about their surroundings and to adjust their overall behaviour accordingly. During my PhD (from University College London and the MRC National Institute of Medical Research) I studied how embryonic epithelial cells undergo apoptosis when they lose contact with their neighbours (Kolahgar, Bardet et al, 2011).
Further interested in how signal transduction regulates cell and tissue function, in June 2010, I joined Eugenia Piddini’s lab in Cambridge as a postdoctoral researcher at the Wellcome Trust / Cancer Research UK Gurdon Institute. My aim is to elucidate how adult tissues are maintained, using the Drosophila intestine as a paradigm.
During this time, I have analysed how cellular fitness is perceived in an adult tissue and how it affects cell-fate decisions (studying the process called “cell competition”) (Kolahgar et al, 2015) and I explore the roles that extracellular factors play in mediating in cell-fate decisions.