Rate My Professor David Sherwood

The Sherwood laboratory investigates the cellular and molecular mechanisms driving dynamic cellular behaviors in development and disease, with a focus on cell invasion through basement membranes, stem cell-niche interactions, and cell-extracellular matrix dynamics. Using C. elegans as a model system, the lab leverages genetics, live-cell imaging, and molecular tools to uncover these processes, which are relevant to regeneration, cancer, and aging. Notable publications include 'Anchor cell invasion into the vulval epithelium in C. elegans' (Developmental Cell, 2003), 'FOS-1 promotes basement-membrane removal during anchor-cell invasion in C. elegans' (Cell, 2005), 'The UNC-40 (DCC) Receptor Mediates a Morphogenetic Switch that Directs C. elegans Anchor Cell Invasion Across Basement Membrane' (Nature Cell Biology, 2012), 'Netrin Stabilizes UNC-40(DCC)-Generated Oscillatory Polarity to Direct Anchor Cell Invasion in C. elegans' (Cell, 2012), 'Forces drive basement membrane invasion in Caenorhabditis elegans' (PNAS, 2018), and recent works such as 'De novo lipid synthesis and polarized prenylation drive cell invasion through basement membrane' (Journal of Cell Biology, 2024) and 'Specialized high-capacity mitochondria fuel cell invasion' (Current Biology, 2026). Sherwood runs the Development and Stem Cell Biology Colloquium each spring, teaches undergraduate Cell Biology (Bio 220) and graduate courses on cell invasion, basement membrane biology, and developmental classics, and co-directs the Embryology Course at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts.