The Weavers lab combines state-of-the-art techniques across scales, from whole organism live-imaging and next-generation sequencing, to ex vivo tissue culture, deep learning (AI) and human genetic epidemiology. Our research is highly inter-disciplinary and involves collaborations with mathematicians, physicists, chemists and clinicians.

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What do we mean by 'Tissue Resilience' and why is it important?

Many body tissues (including our skin and internal organs) are frequently exposed to harmful and toxic insults. These insults come from a variety of sources - including the environment (e.g. sunlight, smoking or pollution), mechanical insults (e.g. accidental injury or surgery) and even from within our own bodies (e.g. inflammation or metabolism). It is crucial that our tissues have robust coping or 'resilience' strategies to withstand or repair this damage, in order to maintain their integrity and function.

 

Without proper resilience mechanisms, our tissues cannot resist or recover from the insult, eventually losing functional capacity and causing disease, such as the inability to heal wounds or a decline in renal function or fertility.

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What is our lab interested in?

In our lab we want to discover the molecular and cellular details of these 'resilience' mechanisms.

How are they switched on in the right place and at the right time? Can we translate our findings from the lab to the clinic to improve the patient resilience during surgery? Can we identify individuals that are genetically predisposed to having 'low resilience' and more vulnerable to debilitating disease?

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