Our lab uses the sea anemone Nematostella vectensis to understand nervous system evolution and regeneration. I will introduce Nematostella highlighting the unique features of its phylogenetic position and neurobiology that make it well suited to investigate fundamental questions in neurobiology. Then I will share a few vignettes from our lab that give an overview of the questions we are tackling and how they impact our understanding of the origin of complex centralized nervous systems and behaviors. In the last few minutes, I will discuss an emerging project that my team is working on in collaboration with multiple Lehigh PIs in the quest to enhance our ability to describe the regulatory networks that impart neuronal fates in nervous systems forming in different contexts such as development, regeneration, and during growth.
Dr. Layden got his B.S. in Cell and Developmental Biology at the University of Rochester and Ph.D. from the University of Oregon. As an undergraduate he worked on the enzyme kinetics of glycosyl transferases in C. elegans, and his Ph.D focused on understanding mechanisms of generating motor neuron fates in Drosophila and zebrafish. As a postdoc he launched the sea anemone Nematostella vectensis as a model system to investigate fundamental questions in neurobiology related to nervous system evolution, regeneration, and function.