Damon Runyon Researchers

Dr. Barton investigates the regulation of cell migration. Specifically, she aims to understand how spatial information is generated to guide migrating cells and how cell migration is terminated when the target tissue is reached. To gain insights into these processes, she is studying migration of Drosophila germ cells to the gonad during embryogenesis as a model system. Because many features of Drosophila germ cell migration are similar to tumor cell migration, novel processes discovered with this model system will shed light on the mechanisms of metastasis.