Dr. Florentine Rutaganira

Biography

Dr. Rutaganira uses choanoflagellates—the closest living single-celled relatives to animals—to study the origin of animal cell communication. He applies chemical, genetic, and cell biological tools to probe choanoflagellate cell-cell communication and its implications for understanding animal cell signaling and the origin of multicellularity in animals. His research focuses on how multicellular organisms respond to external stimuli and the evolution of specialized mechanisms to coordinate the actions of individual cells. Cell-cell signaling is critical in the biology of multicellular organisms, and understanding its evolution is essential to uncover core mechanisms of animal signaling. He investigates the roles of receptors in facilitating intercellular communication, linking surface signaling to intracellular growth and survival. Furthermore, he explores how the evolutionary history of signaling receptors across different lineages has enabled complex multicellularity, offering insights into the ancestral functions of receptor signaling that will inform the study of multicellular organisms including plants and fungi.

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