Franklin D. Costantini, Ph.D.

Research

The general interest of our laboratory is in the role of cell-cell signaling and signal transduction in renal organogenesis, with emphasis on the Ret receptor tyrosine kinase. Since discovering that Ret is required for kidney development, we have focused on understanding the role of Ret, its ligand GDNF, and downstream signaling pathways and target genes in branching morphogenesis. Our main approach is to generate transgenic, chimeric, knock-in and knock-out mice, to manipulate the expression and/or sequence of proteins in the GDNF/Ret signaling pathway, and then to investigate the effects of these manipulations during development in vivo and in organ explant cultures.