Cold tolerance, cell biology, molecular biology, stress physiology and entomology.

The Toxopeus lab studies the cell and molecular biology of how insects survive freezing. This is important for understanding how these critters survive winter, and how they might respond to future changes in their environment, e.g. due to global climate change. Our work can also inform how to cryopreserve human cells and tissues for biomedical use. We use an integrative approach to answer questions about freeze tolerance, using techniques such as qPCR, RNAi interference, confocal microscopy, and transcriptomics