DR. PETER D. VIZE

.Sc.Hons. (Monash, Australia), Ph.D. (Adelaide, Australia) - Adjunct Associate Professor, Department of Biochemistry & Molecular Biology, Associate Professor, Department of Biological Sciences.

Research Interests:

The kidney has been used as a model for investigating how organs form for many years, usually in the mouse. Amphibians have many advantages as an experimental organism, for example investigators can generate thousands of embryos, and can manipulate embryonic development by microdissection in a simple saline solution. A further advantage is that amphibians have a very simple embryonic kidney, the pronephros, which is much like an enlarged version of a single human kidney nephron. The average human kidney on the other hand, contains about 1 million nephrons, and is much more difficult to work with. Another big advantage of the frog system is microinjection. We can test the effect of a gene on kidney development simply by microinjecting the mRNA coding for the gene product of interest into developing embryos. Xenopus develop very quickly, so we can study the effect of injections on kidney development two days later.

Tumour-suppressors are genes required to control cell proliferation or cell death. The loss of these genes by mutation is a key step in the progression of human cancers. We are interested in the role of these genes in regulating differentiation in developing embryos, and whether or not loss of tumour-supressor gene function contributes to dedifferentiation in mammalian cancers.

We use a combination of classical embryology and modern molecular biology to explore basic questions about how cells learn that they are to form in the embryo, and how they respond to this information and activate the appropriate gene expression patterns. Other active projects include exploring novel transgenic methods in amphibians, cancer in amphibians, tumour suppressor gene function in vertebrates and the development of aglomerular kidneys in marine fishes.

See Dr. Vize's Website

Personnel:

Paul Brown, Ph.D	Graduate Student
Sarah Davies	Graduate Student
Dan Hilton	Graduate Student
Bianca Maters	Graduate Student
Kyle McCoy	Graduate Student
Caroline White	Graduate Student
Ms. Linda Marin	Administrative Assistant

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

View Pub Med for Recent publications & abstracts

Recent Publications:

• Bowes, J.B., Snyder, K.. Segerdell, E., Gibb, R., Jarabek, C., Noumen, E., Pollet, N. and Vize, P.D. (2008). Xenbase: a Xenopus biology and genomics resource. Nucl. Acids. Res. 36: D761-D767.
• Gerth, V.E., Katsuyama, K., Snyder, K., Bowes, J.B., Kitayama, A., Ueno, N. and Vize, P.D. (2007) Projecting 2D gene expression data into 3 and 4D space. Devel. Dynamics, 236: 1036-1043.
• Urban, A., Zhou, X. Ungoss, J., Raible, D.W., Altmann, C.R. and Vize, P.D. (2006). FGF is essential for both condensation and mesenchymal-epithelial transition stages of pronephric kidney tubule development.  Developmental Biology 297, 103-117.
• Gerth, V.E., Zhou, X. and Vize, P.D. (2005). Nephrin expression and 3D morphogenesis of the Xenopus pronephric glomus. Developmental Dynamics, 233: 1131-1139.
• Zhou, X. and Vize, P.D. (2005a). Amino acid cotransporter SLC3A2 is selectively expressed in the early proximal segment of Xenopus pronephric kidney nephrons. MOD Gene Exp. Patterns, 5: 774-777.
• Zhou, X. and Vize, P.D. (2005b). Pronephric regulation of acid-base balance; coexpression of carbonic anhydrase type 2 and sodium-bicarbonate cotransporter-1 in the late distal segment. Developmental Dynamics, 232: 142-144.
• Gerth, V.E. and Vize, P.D. (2005). A Java tool for dynamic web-based 3D visualization of anatomy and overlapping gene or protein expression patterns. Bioinformatics 21; 1278-1279
• Zhou, X. and Vize, P.D. (2004). Proximo-distal specialization of epithelial transport processes within the Xenopus pronephric tubules. Developmental Biology 271: 322-338. 
• Vize, P.D. and Smith, H.W. (2004). A Homeric view of kidney evolution. Anatomical Record 277: 344-354. 
• Book: Peter D. Vize, Adrian S. Woolf & Jonathan Bard (Editors).  The Kidney; From Normal Development to Congenital Disease.  Academic Press, Amsterdam. ISBN: 0127224416. Published February, 2003
•  Urban, A., Zhou, X. Ungoss, J., Raible, D.W., Altmann, C.R. and Vize, P.D. (2006). FGF is essential for both condensation and mesenchymal-epithelial transition stages of pronephric kidney tubule development.. Developmental Biology 297, 103-117.
• Gerth, V.E., Zhou, X. and Vize, P.D. (2005). Nephrin expression and 3D morphogenesis of the Xenopus pronephric glomus. Developmental Dynamics, 233: 1131-1139.
•  Zhou, X. and Vize, P.D. (2005a). Amino acid cotransporter SLC3A2 is selectively expressed in the early proximal segment of Xenopus pronephric kidney nephrons. MOD Gene Exp. Patterns, 5: 774-777.
•  Zhou, X. and Vize, P.D. (2005b). Pronephric regulation of acid-base balance; coexpression of carbonic anhydrase type 2 and sodium-bicarbonate cotransporter-1 in the late distal segment. Developmental Dynamics, 232: 142-144.
•   Gerth, V.E. and Vize, P.D. (2005). A Java tool for dynamic web-based 3D visualization of anatomy and overlapping gene or protein expression patterns. Bioinformatics 21; 1278-1279
•  Zhou, X. and Vize, P.D. (2004). Proximo-distal specialization of epithelial transport processes within the Xenopus pronephric tubules. Developmental Biology 271: 322-338.
•  Vize, P.D. and Smith, H.W. (2004). A Homeric view of kidney evolution. Anatomical Record 277: 344-354. 
•  Bowes, J.B. and Vize, P.D. (2003). Xenopus informatics. Current Genomics 4: 653-664.  
•  Reichman, J.R., Wilcox, T.P. and Vize, P.D. (2003). Characterization and organization of the PCP gene family      in Symbiodinium from Hippopus hippopus : low levels of concerted evolution among PCP genes contribute to predicted isoform diversity and spectral tuning of chromophores. Mol. Biol. Evol. 20: 2143-2154. 
•  Vize, P.D. (2003). The chloride conductance channel ClC-K is a specific marker for the Xenopus pronephric distal      tubule and duct. Gene Exp. Patterns 3: 347-350.
• Vize, P.D. (2003). The embryonic kidneys and other nephrogenic models. In "The Kidney: From Normal Development to Congenital Disease." Peter D. Vize, Adrian S. Woolf & Jonathan Bard (Editors). Academic Press, Amsterdam. 

Contact Information:

The University of Calgary,
Department of Biological Sciences,
2500 University Drive NW, Calgary, AB
Canada T2N 1N4.
Phone: 403 220-8502
Fax:403 289-9311
E-mail: pvise [at] ucalgary [dot] ca