The Vaccari lab investigates fundamental questions concerning organ development and homeostasis, both in health and in disease, in particular in the context of tumorigenesis and rare and ultra-rare syndromes. We focus on the role of membrane trafficking and signal transduction in shaping and maintaining tissues and in preventing pathogenesis. Key signaling and trafficking regulators that we would like to know all about are – at the moment – Notch, the Endosomal Sorting Required for Transport (ESCRT) complex, the vacuolar-H+ ATPase (V-ATPase), the Soluble NSF Attachment Protein Receptors (SNAREs) Snap29 and the transcription factor Mitf. We have a long standing interest in how these factors act in endocytosis, autophagy, lysosomal biogenesis and cell division. We use human cells in culture and the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster as model systems to take our observations from the subcellular to in vivo level. We love to learn about how stem cells contribute to tissue formation and are masters of genetics and cell biology.