Accepting PhD Students

PhD projects

Yun Fan’s research centres on understanding how cell death, cell proliferation and cell differentiation are co-ordinated to maintain tissue homeostasis. This has important implications for cancer development and tissue regeneration.

Tissue homeostasis in multicellular organisms requires co-ordinated cell death (apoptosis), cell proliferation and cell differentiation. Intriguingly, apoptotic cells can also induce additional divisions of the remaining cells to compensate for cell loss - a process termed apoptosis-induced compensatory cell proliferation (CP). Recent studies have revealed that stress-induced apoptotic cells can send growth signals to trigger CP through a non-apoptotic function of caspases, a family of cysteine-proteases that normally execute apoptosis. UsingDrosophila, Dr Fan’s lab has developed unique assays to systematically identify and characterise novel CP regulators in both proliferating and differentiating tissues. Its long-term goal is to elucidate the relevance of CP regulation in tissue regeneration and tumorigenesis.