Erica Tross
Fisk University
Ian G. Macara lab
The existence of stem cells in the mammary gland is controversial, but lineage tracing and transplantation assays have identified a cell population that behaves as unipotent basal progenitors in vivo, but gains multipotent potential in vitro. I use this cell population that expresses a splice variant of the SH2 domain-containing 5'-inositol phosphatase (s-SHIP) to study cell plasticity and elucidate the gene signature that defines stemness in this population.