Through PURM, I had the opportunity to work with the Murray Lab of Developmental Genetics in the research of early developmental regulatory genes in C. elegans embryos.  I focused on tbx genes, which produce transcription factors that are involved in cell growth and differentiation in early embryos.  I also was able to study a few homeotic genes, which have similar functions in the early development of C. elegans embryos.  With the Murray lab, I crossed strains of worms with red fluorescent proteins tagged to the genes of interest into strains with green fluorescent proteins tagged to histones in all cells.  This, along with a state of the art imaging software, allowed me to track individual cells as the embryo developed, as well as spatial and temporal expression of the genes of interest.  This allowed me to create an ancestral tree for the expression of tbx-39 in the developing embryo, in order to track the lineages in which the gene is expressed.  Further study will attempt to establish lineages for the other genes of interest, as well as determining the pathways in which these early developmental regulatory genes interact with each other.