Ahmet Ay (Biology and Mathematics) and his collaborator Ertugrul Ozbudak (Albert Einstein College of Medicine) have been awarded $107,392 for their project 鈥淚nterdisciplinary Investigation of the Vertebral Segmentation Clock鈥. The gene regulatory network instructingdevelopment of the vertebral column has remained elusive. Expression of multiple genes display dynamic waves in the precursor cells, which are primed to differentiate into the vertebrae disks. This project will combine computational methods for modeling large-scale systems with molecular perturbation techniques in the laboratory to pin down the gene regulatory circuit controlling segmentation of the vertebrae disks during embryonic development.