Welcome to the McCusker Lab

The McCusker Lab focuses on elucidating the molecular mechanisms underlaying organ regeneration in adults. Current studies are performed using the Mexican Axolotl (Ambystoma mexicanum) as a model organism, as this animal is one of the few tetrapod species that retains the ability to regenerate complicated biological structures as adults. The members of the lab incorporate a variety of molecular, cellular, biochemical, and classical-embryology techniques in order to investigate how axolotl cells regenerate missing limb structures.

One of our long-term goals of the work is to understand how regeneration naturally occurs in certain species, so that we can apply these principles to safely unlock the regenerative potential in humans. In addition, research also has applications to other important areas of investigation, such as cancer and stem cell biology.

We believe in openness as a means to advance science and our understand the world arround us. In this spirit, in addition to sharing our findings through publications, we also generate computationsl tools that we share as open source code (see bellow). To find out more about our work and our lab, visit our website at the University of Massachusetts Boston.

Open Source Code

As part of our chromatin quantification project, to date, we have shared two tools that were part of our publication Sosnik, J., Vieira, W. A., Webster, K. A., Siegfried, K. R. and McCusker, C. D. (2017). A New and Improved Algorithm for the Quantification of Chromatin Condensation from Microscopic Data Shows Decreased Chromatin Condensation in Regenerating Axolotl Limb Cells. PLoS ONE12(10): e0185292. Feel free to explore our project pages and access the code there.

Contact and Support

Feel free to contact Professor McCusker by email.

Having trouble finidng what you are looking for? Email Julian Sosnik and we’ll help you sort it out.