Research Interests and Techniques
Research endeavours (Developmental and Cell Biology, Endocrinology)- The specific career contribution is the use of fishes of relatively ancient and disparate lineages to investigate many biological questions. Included among the results are biomedical applications (eg. liver pathologies and iron-storage disease), novel views on the evolution of vertebrate organ systems (eg. kidney, adrenal cortex, thyroid gland, pancreatic islets), descriptions of unique developmental phenomena (eg. biliary atresia, morphogenesis of cartilage), environmental cues affecting development (eg. temperature cues and heat-shock response), and the development of novel methods of assessing and controlling population growth (sea lamprey control programme of the Great Lakes).
Technical approaches - include gross anatomy, population studies through field experimentation, physiology, all types of specialized microscopy (including , scanning and transmission electron microscopy, freeze fracture, immunological, and histochemical) and more recently, molecular biology.