Mick Yoder, assistant professor of biology at Penn State Brandywine, is using a colony of frogs to study cell behavior in embryonic development.
The project stems from a long-term interest in early cell development, which became a focus of Yoder’s research while he was still a graduate student.
“In graduate school, I worked on a mouse model trying to understand neural tube defects—how the spinal cord forms, gets patterned and closes,” said Yoder. “I ended up strengthening those skills after grad school as a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Virginia. I’ve always been interested in cell-to-cell interactions, so I really lucked out to begin my research in a lab that had a foot in that door.”
Today, Yoder’s own research focuses on mesoderm, a group of embryonic cells that eventually gives rise to muscle, bone, kidneys, blood cells, connective tissue, and other tissues. During embryonic development the mesoderm divides into two populations, yielding midline structures such as the notochord and repeated lateral structures such as somites. He studies a specific protein involved in that process, axial protocadherin, to better understand how cells move and form structures.