Category: Announcements

Genes aren’t the sole driver instructing cells to build multicellular structures, tissues, and organs. In a new paper published in Nature Communications, USC Stem Cell scientist Leonardo Morsut and Caltech computational biologist Matt Thomson characterize the influence of another important developmental driver: cell density, or how loosely or tightly cells are packed into a given…Continue Reading By exerting “crowd control” over mouse cells, scientists make progress towards engineering tissues

To help patients in need of transplants, artificial kidneys would have to function like their natural counterparts, but they wouldn’t necessarily have to look like them. With a new $1 million prize from the Kidney Innovation Accelerator, or KidneyX, a team of USC Stem Cell scientists led by Nils Lindström in collaboration with Leonardo Morsut…Continue Reading USC Stem Cell’s journey towards 1,000 mini-kidneys begins with $1 million from KidneyX

How do complex biological structures—an eye, a hand, a brain—emerge from a single fertilized egg? This is the fundamental question of developmental biology, and a mystery still being grappled with by scientists who hope to one day apply the same principles to heal damaged tissues or regrow ailing organs. Now, in a study published May 31…Continue Reading Synthetic “tissues” build themselves

The Morsut Lab is please to welcome new research lab technician Victoria Fitts….Continue Reading Welcome, Victoria!

Leonardo Morsut will be attending the EDEV2017 conference focusing on Engineering Multicellular Self-Organization in Lausanne, Switzerland from November 13–14….Continue Reading Leonardo Morsut will attend EDEV2017 conference

Leonardo Morsut will be speaking at UC Santa Barbara as part of their Bioengineering Faculty Research Seminar Series. His presentation will be entitled “Synthetic biology approaches for multicellular systems: from engineered cell therapy to synthetic tissue development.”…Continue Reading Leonardo Morsut will speak at UC Santa Barbara

Alexander (Alex) March gave a presentation entitled “Activation of synthetic cell receptors using printed ligand patterns: building towards a tissue with defined cellular architecture” at the annual departmental retreat on 10/20–10/21….Continue Reading Alexander March presents at departmental retreat

The Morsut Lab is please to welcome two new PhD students to the lab: Libere Ndacayisaba and Kuo-Chang (Ted) Tseng….Continue Reading Welcome, Libere and Ted!

Leonardo Morust is featured in the “Video of the Week” on USC Employee Gateway. Check out the video here:…Continue Reading Leonardo Morsut featured in video on USC Employee Gateway

Leonardo Morsut will speak at the 2017 Society of Developmental Biology meeting in Minneapolis on Friday, July 14 at 9:15 a.m. His talk is titled “Programming cells to design developmental trajectories with synthetic biology molecular tools,” and will be featured during the session “Pattern Formation and Morphogenesis.”…Continue Reading Leonardo Morsut will speak at the 2017 Society of Developmental Biology meeting