In contrast to the dramatic size differences that discriminate cell types, cells of a given cell type are very uniform in size. In typical epithelia, size differences between neighboring cells are sometimes negligible (see examples): numerous individual cells in the tissue are somehow regulated to have the same specific size. This suggests a regulation that specifies the same common target size for the numerous individual cells in the tissue. The mechanism and details of this regulation have yet to be discovered.

In cancer, the situation is often quite different. In pleomorphic cancers, for example, instead of uniformity there is an almost chaotic variability of cell size. This contrast between healthy tissues and pleomorphic cancers suggests that mechanisms that regulate uniformity of cell size are corrupt in certain cancers. 

Our lab uses single cell measurements and various analytic approaches to investigate this fundamental question.