Caren Norden (Cell Biology of Tissue Morphogenesis Lab, Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência, Oeiras, Portugal) has been invited by Filippo Del Bene to hold a talk on Tuesday 14 June, 11 a.m. , in the conference room of the UCL , 13 Rue Moreau.

This talk will be on "Retinal neurogenesis and lamination: What to become, where to become it and how to move from there!"

Abstract
The vertebrate retina is an important outpost of the central nervous system, responsible for the perception and transmission of visual information. It consists of five different types of neurons that reproducibly laminate into three layers, a process of crucial importance for the organ’s function. Unsurprisingly, impaired fate decisions as well as impaired neuronal migrations and lamination lead to impaired retinal function. However, how processes are coordinated at the cellular and tissue level and how variable or robust retinal formation is, is currently still underexplored.

In Caren Norden's lab, they aim to shed light on these questions from different angles, studying on the one hand differentiation phenomena and their variability and on the other hand the migration and lamination phenomena once cell fate is assigned. They use zebrafish as their main model system due to its excellent possibilities for live imaging and quantitative developmental biology. They further employ cross disciplinary approaches to address these issues combining work of cell and developmental biology, biomechanics, theory and computer science. Together, this allows them to integrate cell with tissue-wide phenomena and generate an appreciation of the reproducibility and variability of events.