Sebastian Jimenez (left) from University of Tennessee at Chattanooga and Sally Song (right) from Wellesley College joins the Munro and Kovar Labs for summer research. Sebastian is finding out whether GTPases (particularly Rho-1, CDC-42, Rac-1, and Rac-2) play a role in regulating certain structures of the actin cytoskeleton in the early C. elegans embryo. These structures are filopodia and mini comets, and their regulation correlates with the cell cycle, though it is currently not known to what extent the cell cycle and/or GTPases regulate these processes and whether they do so independently of each other. Sally is investigating whether the cell cycle regulates the appearance of cortical actin structures called filopodia and mini-comets in the early C. elegans embryo.