Research Interests

Vertebrates that include an aquatic larval stage in their life cycles, such as fish and frogs, utilize a simple primitive kidney to perform renal functions until they develop their large (and more human like) adult kidneys. These simple kidneys are called pronephroi. In essence these organs resemble a single human nephron, as opposed to the million nephrons found in a adult human kidney. The key advantage of pronephroi as a model for investigating nephric development is they form in organisms that are perfectly suited to embryological, genetic and molecular analysis. Genes involved in regulating organ formation are simple to isolate, and their function easy to test using either microinjection or genetics. We and others have shown that similar genetic networks function to regulate the development of both simple and complex kidneys and we are working to exploit the many experimental advantages of simple model systems to learn more about how genes regulate this process. Current experiments are investigating the genetic interactions that subdivide the developing pronephros into its various functional subunits, the tubules, the distal segment, the nephric duct and the glomus. Techniques include cloning, microinjection, embryo microsurgery, in situ hybridization, confocal and deconvolution microscopy.

Another area of interest is developing databases of 3D gene expression patterns. At the moment gene expression patterns are represented in databases either as images, which cannot be used as a source of data for bioinformatics, or as text annotations. Annotations can be used to search for genes with common features but are always incomplete and do not allow for high level analysis. Various modeling projects are experimenting with different techniques for relating gene expression data to prebuilt embryo models. We are interested in integrating such models with other genomics resources, such as the Xenopus UniGene data set, microarray data etc. to create tools for mining gene expression data.

Finally, we also work on various marine ecology projects in the Caribbean. There are two major projects, one investigating how corals coordinate their reproductive behaviour in species that participate in mass spawning event, while the second project investigates the interdependence of coral reef ecosystems using fish population genetics. Students have also investigated reproductive strategies in various marine invertebrates- in particular broadcast spawning corals and brittlestars.

 

Courses Taught

Graduate Students

Awards

2006 - AHFMR Research Prize
2003 - Canadian Research Excellence Envelope Award (2001-2003)

Selected publications

• Brady, A.K., Snyder, K. and Vize, P.D. (2011). Circadian cycles of gene expression in the coral, Acropora millepora. PLoS One. in press
• McCoy, K.E., Zhou, X. and Vize, P.D. (2011). Non-canonical wnt signals antagonize and canonical wnt signals promote cell proliferation in early kidney development. Developmental Dynamics 240; 1558-1566
• Jeff B. Bowes, Kevin A. Snyder, Erik Segerdell, Chris J. Jarabek, Kenan Azam, Aaron M. Zorn and Peter D. Vize (2010). Xenbase: Gene expression and improved integration. Nucl. Acids Res. 38 (Database issue): D607-612
• Hellsten, U, Harland, R.M., Gilchrist, M.J., Hendrix, D., Jurka, J., Kapitonov, V., Ovcharenko, I., Putnam, N.H., Shu, S., Taher, L, Blitz, I.L., Blumberg, B., Dichmann, D.S., Dubchak, I., Amaya, E., Detter, J.C., Fletcher, R., Gerhard, D.S., Goodstein, D., Graves, T., Grigoriev, I.V., Grimwood, .J, Kawashima, T., Lindquist, E., Lucas, S.M., Mead, P.E., Mitros, T., Ogino, H., Ohta, Y., Poliakov, A.V., Pollet, N., Robert, J., Salamov, A., Sater, A.K., Schmutz, J., Terry, A., Vize, P.D., Warren, W.C., Wells, D., Wills, A., Wilson, R.K., Zimmerman, L.B., Zorn, A.M., Grainger, R., Grammer, T., Khokha, M.K., Richardson, P.M. and Rokhsar, D.S. (2010) The genome of the western clawed frog Xenopus tropicalis. Science 328: 633-636.
• Vize, P.D., McCoy, K.E. and Zhou, X. (2009) Multichannel wholemount fluorescent and fluorescent/ chromogenic in situ hybridization of Xenopus embryos. Nature Protocols 4: 975-983
• A.K.Brady, J.D. Hilton and Peter D. Vize (2009). Coral spawn timing is a direct response to solar light cycles and is not an entrained circadian response. Coral Reefs 28; 677-680.
  Erratum (2010) DOI 10.1007/s00338-010-0589-2
• Lyons, J.P., Miller, R.K., Zhou, X., Weidinger, G., Denayer, T., Park, J-I., Ji, H., Deroo, T., Jones, E.A. Moon, R.T., Vleminckx, K., Vize, P.D.* and McCrea, P.D.* (2009) Canonical wnt signaling is required for pronephric tubule development. Mechanisms of Development 126: 142-159.
• Vize, P.D. (2009) Transcriptome analysis of the circadian regulatory network in the coral, Acropora millepora. Biological Bulletin 216: 131-137.
• Vize, P.D., Hilton, J.D., Brady, A.K. and Davies, S.W. (2008) Light sensing and the coordination of coral broadcast spawning behavior. Proc. 11th ICRS., 378-381.
• Davies, S.W. and Vize, P.D. (2008). How herbivores affect juvenile coral growth in the Gulf of Mexico. Proc. 11th ICRS., 1214-1218.
• Segerdell, E., Bowes, J.B., Pollet, N. and Vize, P.D. (2008) The Xenopus Anatomical Ontology: a comprehensive map of development in a model vertebrate. BMC Developmental Biology 2008, 8: 92-98.