Ian Macara

Christian de Caestecker, a Ph.D. student in the lab of Ian Macara, Louise B. McGavock Professor and chair of the Department of Cell and Developmental Biology, proposed and validated a mechanism that solved a decades-old mystery: he shed light on the process by which epithelial cells, polarized cells that face the outside world, sort and deliver the specialized proteins they need at each cell’s poles. Read More

If you had visited Vanderbilt nearly a century ago searching for cellular research, you would have found yourself in the Department of Anatomy. Established in 1925, the Department of Anatomy gave way to the Department of Cell Biology before taking on its current moniker—Cell and Developmental Biology—in 2001. Read More

A Vanderbilt laboratory is investigating the sequence of events necessary for the differentiation of stem cells into heart cells—a key step in embryonic development. Postdoctoral fellow Loic Fort and Louise B. McGavock Professor and Chair of Cell and Developmental Biology Ian Macara published their most recent discoveries on this topic… Read More