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Email

akgroves@bcm.edu

Positions

Professor and Vivian L. Smith Endowed Chair in Neuroscience

Departments of Neuroscience and Molecular and Human Genetics
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Director

Graduate Program in Development, Disease Models and Therapeutics
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Education

PhD from Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research, University College London

01/1992 - London, United Kingdom

Post-Doctoral Fellowship at California Institute of Technology

01/1999 - Pasadena, California United States

MA from University of Cambridge

01/1991 - Cambridge, United Kingdom

Professional Interests

• The development, evolution, and regeneration of the inner ear

Professional Statement

Research in our lab spans the development of the inner ear from its earliest beginnings as a piece of embryonic ectoderm to the development of the highly patterned organ of Corti in the cochlea. We are also interested using our understanding of developmental processes to address why the sensory tissue of the cochlea fails to regenerate after damage and to identify genes involved in hereditary deafness.

We have an ongoing collaboration with Shinya Yamamoto's lab at Baylor in which we are trying to use the fruit fly, Drosophila, to identify new mutations in genes that affect hearing. We are also working with Huda Zoghbi's lab to identify targets of transcription factors that promote the differentiation of sensory hair cells. Finally, we also work on some aspects of craniofacial development, prompted by the discovery of the Foxi3 transcription factor, a Forkhead gene that plays crucial roles in the development of the inner ear and the branchial arch region and which causes canine ectodermal dysplasia in three breeds of hairless dogs.

Websites

Selected Publications

• Tao L, Yu H, Llamas J, Trecek T, Wang X, Stojanova Z, Groves AK Segil N "Enhancer decommissioning imposes an epigenetic barrier to sensory hair cell regeneration.." Dev Cell.. 2021;56:1–15.
• Gnedeva K, Wang X, McGovern MM, Barton M, Tao L, (...), Groves AK, Warchol M, Segil N "Organ of Corti size is governed by Yap/Tead-mediated progenitor self-renewal.." Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A.. 2020;117:13552-13561.
• Brown RM 2nd, Nelson JC, Zhang H, Kiernan AE, Groves AK "Notch-mediated lateral induction is necessary to maintain vestibular prosensory identity during inner ear development." Dev Biol. 2020;462:74-84.
• Jen HI, Hill MC, Tao L, Sheng K, Cao W, Zhang H, Yu HV, Llamas J, Zong C, Martin JF, Segil N, Groves AK "Transcriptomic and epigenetic regulation of hair cell regeneration in the mouse utricle and its potentiation by Atoh1.." Elife. 2019;8:pii: e44328.