Rocky Diegmiller

Journal Article Nat Rev Mol Cell Biol · November 11, 2025 Tissue regeneration has historically been the subject of intense scientific scrutiny, from basic biology to applications in regenerative medicine. Use of model organisms and cutting-edge technologies have uncovered various mechanisms of regeneration, but u ... Full text Link to item Cite

To be or not to be: orb, the fusome and oocyte specification in Drosophila.

Journal Article Genetics · April 2024 In the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster, two cells in a cyst of 16 interconnected cells have the potential to become the oocyte, but only one of these will assume an oocyte fate as the cysts transition through regions 2a and 2b of the germarium. The mecha ... Full text Cite

Fusome topology and inheritance during insect gametogenesis.

Journal Article PLoS computational biology · February 2023 From insects to mammals, oocytes and sperm develop within germline cysts comprising cells connected by intercellular bridges (ICBs). In numerous insects, formation of the cyst is accompanied by growth of the fusome-a membranous organelle that permeates the ... Full text Cite

Growth-rate model predicts in vivo tumor response from in vitro data.

Journal Article CPT: pharmacometrics & systems pharmacology · September 2022 A major challenge in oncology drug development is to elucidate why drugs that show promising results in cancer cell lines in vitro fail in mouse studies or human trials. One of the fundamental steps toward solving this problem is to better predict how in v ... Full text Cite

Quantitative models for building and growing fated small cell networks.

Journal Article Interface focus · August 2022 Small cell clusters exhibit numerous phenomena typically associated with complex systems, such as division of labour and programmed cell death. A conserved class of such clusters occurs during oogenesis in the form of germline cysts that give rise to oocyt ... Full text Cite

Collective oscillations of coupled cell cycles.

Journal Article Biophysical journal · October 2021 Problems with networks of coupled oscillators arise in multiple contexts, commonly leading to the question about the dependence of network dynamics on network structure. Previous work has addressed this question in Drosophila oogenesis, in which stable cyt ... Full text Cite

Size scaling in collective cell growth.

Journal Article Development (Cambridge, England) · September 2021 Size is a fundamental feature of living entities and is intimately tied to their function. Scaling laws, which can be traced to D'Arcy Thompson and Julian Huxley, have emerged as a powerful tool for studying regulation of the growth dynamics of organisms a ... Full text Cite

Coupled oscillators coordinate collective germline growth.

Journal Article Developmental cell · March 2021 Developing oocytes need large supplies of macromolecules and organelles. A conserved strategy for accumulating these products is to pool resources of oocyte-associated germline nurse cells. In Drosophila, these cells grow more than 100-fold to boost their ... Full text Cite

Mapping parameter spaces of biological switches.

Journal Article PLoS computational biology · February 2021 Since the seminal 1961 paper of Monod and Jacob, mathematical models of biomolecular circuits have guided our understanding of cell regulation. Model-based exploration of the functional capabilities of any given circuit requires systematic mapping of multi ... Full text Cite

Spherical Caps in Cell Polarization.

Journal Article Biophysical journal · July 2018 Intracellular symmetry breaking plays a key role in wide range of biological processes, both in single cells and in multicellular organisms. An important class of symmetry-breaking mechanisms relies on the cytoplasm/membrane redistribution of proteins that ... Full text Cite

Nuclear lamin stiffness is a barrier to 3D migration, but softness can limit survival.

Journal Article The Journal of cell biology · March 2014 Cell migration through solid tissue often involves large contortions of the nucleus, but biological significance is largely unclear. The nucleoskeletal protein lamin-A varies both within and between cell types and was shown here to contribute to cell sorti ... Full text Cite