Martha Soto, PhD

Martha Soto is a professor at the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine. She received her Bachelor's in Biology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and her PhD in Genetics from Harvard Medical School. She completed her postgraduate training at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center.

Her areas of interest include cell polarity, embryonic morphogenesis, and developmental genetics.

Dr. Soto's current projects in the lab focus on the role of the GEX complex, a regulator of the actin cytoskeleton, in polarized events during development including epidermal cell migration, epithelial cell polarization and regulated nuclear movements.

She has also focused on how the actin cytoskeleton is established and maintained to promote the exquisitely polarized movements of cells during development.  The WAVE/SCAR genes she studies are mutated in many human cancers and in diseases of neuronal development.