Category: News

The outer ear is unique to mammals, but its evolutionary origin has remained a mystery. According to a new study published in Nature from the USC Stem Cell lab of Gage Crump, this intricate coil of cartilage has a surprisingly ancient origin in the gills of fishes and marine invertebrates. “When we started the project,…Continue Reading An earful of gill: USC Stem Cell study points to the evolutionary origin of the mammalian outer ear

A new USC Stem Cell study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) has identified key gene regulators that enable some deafened animals—including fish and lizards—to naturally regenerate their hearing. The findings could guide future efforts to stimulate the regeneration of sensory hearing cells in patients with hearing loss and balance…Continue Reading USC Stem Cell study breaks the silence on how fish and lizards regenerate hearing

Congratulations to Claire Arata for receiving a 2024 USC Student Recognition Award for Leadership, Service, and Community Outreach. Only 25 graduate and undergraduate students across all of USC are selected to receive this highest distinction each year….Continue Reading Claire Arata wins USC Student Recognition Award

A USC-led team of scientists has made a drool-worthy discovery about how tendons and salivary glands develop in the jaw. Their results are published in a new study in Developmental Cell. In order for our jaws to function, they require not only a precisely patterned skeleton, but also tendons that connect the jaw skeleton to…Continue Reading How to assemble a complete jaw

Five-hundred million years ago, it was relatively safe to go back in the water. That’s because creatures of the deep had not yet evolved jaws. In a new pair of studies in eLife and Development, scientists reveal clues about the origin of this thrilling evolutionary innovation in vertebrates. In the studies, Mathi Thiruppathy from Gage…Continue Reading How did vertebrates first evolve jaws?

When Natasha Raj-Derouin (née Natarajan) was doing her medical school rotations at Columbia University in New York City, she was thrilled to find a subspecialty that incorporated some of the lessons she had learned in the master’s program in stem cell biology and regenerative medicine at USC. “What’s been really great is that there is…Continue Reading Stem cell master’s program alumna Natasha Raj-Derouin, an MD pursuing a specialty in reproductive endocrinology and infertility

Cranial neural crests cells, or CNCCs, contribute to many more body parts than their humble name suggests. These remarkable stem cells not only form most of the skull and facial skeleton in all vertebrates ranging from fish to humans, but also can generate everything from gills to the cornea. To understand this versatility, scientists from…Continue Reading A crowning achievement in understanding head development

Rapid technological development in the past decade has allowed scientists to generate more data than ever before. At the same time, increased calls for transparency, reproducibility and data sharing in the scientific community have made it increasingly important to store data for posterity — and to serve as a springboard for future discoveries. Enter the…Continue Reading USC collaboration helps FaceBase reach 1,000-dataset milestone

Contrary to the popular song, the neck bone is actually connected to one of 22 separate head bones that make up the human skull. These plate-like bones intersect at specialized joints called sutures, which normally allow the skull to expand as the brain grows, but are absent in children with a birth defect called craniosynostosis….Continue Reading Study of skull birth defect takes it from the top

“Stunning advances such as CRISPR-based molecular scissors, for which the Nobel Prize in chemistry was just awarded, allow us to precisely change genes, and designer chemicals can silence particular genes. In a recent study from our group published in Nature, however, we find that these tools are still far from perfect,” writes Gage Crump in…Continue Reading Flaws emerge in modeling human genetic diseases in animals