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lab profile
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Michael Hadfield Kewalo Marine Laboratory
41 Ahui St.
Honolulu, HI 96813
USA
hadfield@hawaii.edu
808-539-7319
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| PI: |
YES |
| Taxa Studied: |
Invertebrate Animals |
| Techniques Employed: |
Degenerate PCR, Sanger Sequencing, In Situ Hybridization, Antibody Staining, Epifluoresence Microscopy, Confocal Microscopy, Time-Lapse Microscopy |
| Research Description: |
Researchers in the Hadfield laboratory have long had as their core theme the processes that occur when planktonic larvae of diverse marine invertebrate animals settle to the benthos and undergo the complex developmental processes of metamorphosis. Larvae of different species are known to respond to either dissolved or surface-bound cues to settlement and metamorphosis. In the Hadfield labs, these cues are investigated in terms of the developmental processes that they actually induce; the stimulatory cues are thus investigated as chemical ligands with specific receptors on the outer surfaces of larvae. Binding of ligand with receptors produces a cascade of behavioral and morphogenetic processes, which result in the profound morphological and physiological alterations that are summarized as metamorphosis. Using especially a widely distributed tropical marine slug, Phestilla sibogae, and a common warm-water fouling organism, the tube worm Hydroides elegans, graduate student and postdoctoral researchers have collaborated with the P.I. to study the nature of the external cues, the site of their perception, the nature of receptor mechanisms, the role of the nervous system in promulgating the morphogenetic signal, and, most recently, the molecular events of metamorphic activation. |
| Lab Web Page: |
http://www.kewalo.hawaii.edu/hadfield/index.html |
| Willing to Host Undergraduates: |
YES |
| Actively Seeking Undergraduates: |
NO |
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