Adam Martin

Adam Martin did his graduate studies with David Drubin at UC Berkeley, where he discovered mechanisms by which the actin cytoskeleton generates force to promote endocytosis in budding yeast.  Subsequently, Adam Martin did postdoctoral research with Eric Wieschaus where he used the fruit fly embryo to discover a dynamic mode of contractility, called contractile pulsing, which has been shown to be a widespread mechanism for changing tissue shape from invertebrates to mammals.

To form a complex organ, tissues must change their shape.  We are interested in molecular, cellular, and tissue-level mechanisms that generate force and sculpt tissues during development.  This fundamental biological problem underlies human birth defects ranging from congenital heart disorders to spina bifida.  We use imaging integrated with computational analysis to understand how tissue shape emerges from collective cellular behaviors.