During my undergraduate, I conducted an independent research project where I studied the function of a transcription factor, RFX4, during the development of the dorsal hindbrain (imagine zooming in the middle-upper part of the fish body).

In this project, we identified that loss of RFX4 leads to a curved body shape and shrinkage of brain ventricles (two phenotypes that were just terrifying and attractive enough to convert an economics student to biology). We found evidence that suggests RFX4 regulates ZIC2 expression and controls cell polarity and cell proliferation in the developing neural tube.

upper - RFX4 mutant

bottom - wildtype