McCrea Laboratory

Using primary neurons, developing frog embryos and cell lines, we seek to understand the biology of essential catenin proteins. Catenins transduce developmental (e.g. canonical-Wnt pathway) and pathologic signals into the nucleus. Being multi-functional, they further bind and modulate cadherins in regulating cell-cell adhesion at junctions, and influence small-GTPases that determine the behavior of cytoskeletal structures, cell shape and cell movements. Many key interactions and functions of the catenins are yet to be discovered.