Professor Christine Watson
Position: Professor
Personal home page:
http://www.path.cam.ac.uk/~madgroup
PubMed journal articles - click here
Professor Christine Watson is pleased to consider applications from prospective PhD students.
I am a mammary gland biologist with a particular interest in the signaling pathways that regulate mammary gland development and lineage commitment of progenitor cells. The mouse mammary gland is one of the most dramatic examples of physiologically regulated cell death. Our recent work is focussed on trying to understand the mechanisms of cell death regulation in involuting mammary gland and we have shown that lysosomal permeabilisation, that is regulated by Stat3, is the primary cell death pathway. We have also identified a novel gene Zfp157 as a master regulator of lineage comittment.
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1. Oliver, C.H., Khaled, W.T., Frend, H.T., Nichols, J. And Watson, C.J. (2012) The Stat6 regulated KRAB domain zinc finger protein Zfp157 regulates the balance of lineages in mammary gland and compensates for loss of Gata-3 (2012) Genes & Development. May 15;26(10):1086-97. 2. Kreuzaler, P.A., Staniszewska, A.D., Li, W., Omidvar, N., Kedjouar, B., Turkson, J., Poli, V., Flavell, R.A., Clarkson, R.W.E. and Watson, C.J. (2011) Stat3 controls lysosomal mediated cell death in vivo. Nature Cell Biology Mar;13(3):303-9. 3. Li W Li W, Ferguson BJ, Khaled WT, Tevendale M, Stingl J, Poli V, Rich T, Salomoni P, Watson CJ. (2009) PML depletion disrupts normal mammary gland development and skews the composition of the mammary luminal cell progenitor pool. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 106(12):4725-30.