{"id":578,"date":"2015-03-30T14:46:10","date_gmt":"2015-03-30T18:46:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/biology\/?post_type=profile&p=578"},"modified":"2026-07-02T11:10:01","modified_gmt":"2026-07-02T15:10:01","slug":"kim-mccall","status":"publish","type":"profile","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/biology\/people\/profiles\/kim-mccall\/","title":{"rendered":"Kim McCall"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lab Website<\/a>CV<\/a>Google<\/a><\/p>\n

Current Research<\/h3>\n

Cell death plays a central role in development and in many diseases. The research in my laboratory is focused on understanding the molecular mechanisms of programmed cell death and cell clearance. The model that we are using is the fruitfly Drosophila melanogaster<\/em>, an organism with unique advantages in genetics and cell biology. A major interest of the lab is germline cell death, which can occur at several distinct stages in the fly ovary. The death of nurse cells in late oogenesis is developmentally programmed and occurs rapidly and synchronously in clusters as each oocyte develops. Germline cell death can also occur in response to starvation or other insults. While apoptosis is the major form of cell death occurring in response to starvation, a novel non-apoptotic type of cell death occurs during developmental nurse cell death.<\/p>\n

The final step in programmed cell death is the removal of the corpse.\u00a0 Defective dead cell clearance is associated with auto-immune and neurodegenerative diseases in humans.\u00a0 In the fly ovary, \u201cprofessional\u201d phagocytes like macrophages are limited, and most of the cell clearance is carried out by epithelial follicle cells. Follicle cells synchronously engulf dying nurse cells, providing a powerful in vivo model system for investigating the genetics and cell biology of engulfment. We are also investigating cell clearance mechanisms by glia in the brain.<\/p>\n

We are currently using genetic and molecular approaches to identify components of the cell death and cell clearance pathways in the ovary and the brain. Given the high degree of evolutionary conservation of known cell death mechanisms, we expect that pathways that we uncover in Drosophila<\/em> will be conserved in humans.<\/p>\n

Selected Publications<\/h3>\n