Editor biographies
Editor-in-Chief
James Briscoe
Research interests
James Briscoe is a senior group leader at the Francis Crick Institute in London. He obtained a BSc from the University of Warwick, UK, a PhD at the Imperial Cancer Research Fund, London and then undertook postdoctoral training at Columbia University, New York, USA. In 2000 he moved to the Medical Research Council's National Institute for Medical Research (now part of the Francis Crick Institute). His research interests include the molecular and cellular mechanisms of graded signalling by morphogens and the role of transcriptional networks in the specification of cell fate in the vertebrate central nervous system. To address these questions his lab uses a range of experimental and computational techniques with model systems that include mouse and chick embryos and embryonic stem cells.
Areas of expertise
Vertebrate development, morphogen signaling, gene regulatory networks, spinal cord, dynamical systems modelling.
Deputy Editor
Steve Wilson
Research interests
Steve Wilson is Professor of Developmental Genetics and Vice-Dean for Research in the Faculty of Life Sciences at University College London (UCL). He has 20 years of experience working with zebrafish as a model system to study nervous system and mesoderm development. His research team has defined roles for various signalling pathways in regional patterning of the forebrain and in regulating the cell movements that occur during morphogenesis. A major focus for his recent work has been on the development of CNS asymmetry from the early events that lead to the breaking of symmetry between left and right sides of the brain through the development of lateralized circuitry to behaviour. His group is also studying eye development and the developmental neuroanatomy of the brain.
Areas of expertise
Zebrafish neural development, forebrain development, asymmetry/laterality.
Editors
Swathi Arur
Research interests
Swathi Arur is a Professor and Deputy Chair of the Department of Genetics, and President’s Scholar at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. Her laboratory aims to uncover fundamental cellular and molecular mechanisms of germ cell development and adaptability in response to physiological and environmental perturbations. Her lab studies the role of RAS/ERK signaling in the coordination of multiple cellular processes during oogenesis in the model organism Caenorhabditis elegans. A second area of focus in her lab is to extend fundamental discoveries made in C. elegans to develop mouse models that provide new insights into developmental control of cancer progression.
Areas of expertise
C. elegans, Cancer development and progression, Cell Signaling, Germ cell development, Meiosis, Oogenesis, Small non-coding RNAs.
Dominique Bergmann
Research interests
Dominique Bergmann is the Shirley R. and Leonard W. Ely, Jr. Professor of the School of Humanities and Sciences at Stanford University and an HHMI Investigator. Her research interests include how cells make fate decisions in the context of organized tissues, and how the environment impacts those decisions. Her lab addresses these questions using the stomatal lineage, a multipotent epidermal stem-cell lineage in plants as a model. Her team combines quantitative live-cell imaging and modeling with technologies they adapt to assess chromatin, transcriptomes and proteomes at single cell, or single cell-type, resolution in developing plant tissues. Together with colleagues, Dr. Bergmann endeavors to learn the rule of flexible development to make climate resilient or even climate change-mitigating plants.
Areas of expertise
Plant Development, Cell polarity and asymmetric divisions, Cell fate determination, Developmental responses to environmental change
Benoit Bruneau
Research interests
Benoit G. Bruneau is Associate Director and William H. Younger, Jr. Senior Investigator at the Gladstone Institute of Cardiovascular Disease, and Professor in the Department of Pediatrics at the University of California, San Francisco. His research focuses on how transcription factors and chromatin remodelling complexes regulate cardiac organogenesis and differentiation in order to understand fundamental aspects of gene regulation during lineage commitment and differentiation, and to uncover the basis of congenital and inherited heart disease. Combining stem cell biology and mouse genetics, Dr Bruneau’s research is also aimed at understanding the patterning cues that guide cardiac development, and developing strategies for regenerative medicine and disease modelling.
Areas of expertise
Heart development, cardiac differentiation, chromatin, epigenetics, transcriptional regulation, reprogramming.
Cassandra Extavour
Research interests
Cassandra Extavour is a Professor in the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University. Her laboratory is interested in understanding early embryonic development, the genes that control this, the evolutionary origin of those genes and how their functions have changed over evolutionary time. Because of the critical role of germ cells not only in development but also in evolution, her work has primarily focused on germ cell development in a comparative context, using a range of arthropod systems.
Areas of expertise
Evo-devo, germ line development, evolution of arthropod body plans, tools for emerging model organisms.
François Guillemot
Research interests
François Guillemot is a Group Leader at The Francis Crick Institute, London, UK. His group uses the mouse forebrain as a model to address how the development of neural lineages is controlled by intrinsic genetic programmes and extracellular signals. They use a variety of genetic, genomic and imaging approaches to determine how interactions between transcription factors and signalling pathways regulate the different steps of neurogenesis, from the divisions and fate specification of stem cells to the migration and differentiation of neurons.
Areas of expertise
Neural development, embryonic and adult neurogenesis, cerebral cortex, transcriptional regulation.
Anna-Katerina Hadjantonakis
Research interests
Anna-Katerina (Kat) Hadjantonakis is a member and chair of the Developmental Biology Program at the Sloan Kettering Institute, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, and a Professor at Cornell University, New York. She obtained a BSc and PhD from Imperial College London, and then undertook postdoctoral training at the Samuel Lunenfeld (now Lunenfeld-Tanenbaum) Research Institute, Toronto, and Columbia University, New York. With a primary focus on the development of the endoderm, her research group studies the cellular and molecular mechanisms of lineage specification and tissue patterning in early mouse embryos, and in mouse and human stem cell-derived embryo models.
Areas of expertise
Mammalian embryogenesis, cell lineage specification and plasticity, endoderm development and differentiation.
Haruhiko Koseki
Research interests
Haruhiko Koseki is Group Director at the RIKEN Center for Allergy and Immunology in Yokohama, Japan. The goal of Dr Koseki's research is to understand how cellular phenotypes can be stably retained through development irrespective of environmental cues in some situations, while being altered in response to external signals in others. His work also focuses on how these epigenetic mechanisms control morphogenesis and tissue homeostasis. Towards this end, his laboratory combines mouse genetics, genomic and imaging approaches to study how chromatin modifications regulate stem cell identities, meiosis, patterning and organ development.
Areas of expertise
Mouse genetics, epigenetics, patterning, meiosis, ES cells, axial specifications.
Thomas Lecuit
Research interests
Thomas Lecuit is Director of Research for CNRS, and a Group Leader at the Developmental Biology Institute of Marseille at Luminy (IBDML) at Marseille University. His laboratory investigates the mechanisms of cell polarisation, tissue morphogenesis and mechanics, using the fruitfly Drosophila as a model system. A major focus of his research is to understand how tissues maintain or lose control of the balance between robustness and plasticity. Dr Lecuit has developed expertise across a range of developmental events, including among them: limb patterning; morphogen gradient formation and activity; gastrulation; and the cell biology of Drosophila development, with a particular emphasis on vesicular trafficking, cytoskeleton organisation/dynamics, adhesion and cell polarity. Beyond the classical approaches that are needed to study embryonic development, such as genetics and molecular biology, Dr Lecuit has acquired special expertise on quantitative imaging of cell and protein dynamics in living embryos, and on the physics and modelling of embryonic development.
Areas of expertise
Drosophila, epithelium, gastrulation, limb patterning, morphogenesis, cell polarity, biophysics.
Liz Robertson
Research interests
Liz Robertson is Professor of Developmental Biology and a Wellcome Trust Principal Research Fellow at the Sir William Dunn School of Pathology, University of Oxford. Her work exploits transgenic and embryonic stem (ES) cell technologies to investigate how TGFβ signalling cascades influence cell fate decisions and lineage commitment in the mouse embryo. In particular, her work addresses the role of the nodal/Smad pathway, and the downstream T box transcription factor Eomes, in regulating anterior-posterior axis formation, epithelial to mesenchymal transition, and definitive endoderm specification during establishment of the body plan. A second area of interest is on understanding the mechanism by which the zinc finger transcriptional repressor Blimp1/Prdm1, a target of BMP signalling, regulates the formation of multiple embryonic tissues and organs.
Areas of expertise
Mouse embryogenesis, early axis formation and patterning, nodal signalling, TGFβ signalling, embryonic stem cells.
Peter Rugg-Gunn
Research interests
Peter Rugg-Gunn is a senior group leader at the Babraham Institute in Cambridge. He is also an affiliate principal investigator at the Cambridge Stem Cell Institute and at the Centre for Trophoblast Research. He obtained a BSc from the University of York, UK, a PhD at the University of Cambridge, and then undertook postdoctoral training at The Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, Canada. In 2011, he moved to the Babraham Institute. His research interests centre on understanding how the epigenome is established during human development and how this affects cell fate decisions in human embryos and in stem cell-based embryo models. His group are particularly interested in epigenetic mechanisms that contribute to cellular plasticity and lineage specification.
Areas of expertise
Human development, embryo models, pluripotent stem cells, epigenetics, cell lineage specification.
Debra Silver
Research interests
Debra Silver is a Professor of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology, Neurobiology, and Cell Biology at Duke University School of Medicine. Her lab investigates cell biological and genetic mechanisms governing embryonic cerebral cortex development and contributing to neurodevelopmental pathologies. A major research focus is on post-transcriptional control of neurogenesis, including by RNA binding proteins and sub-cellular RNA regulation. A complementary research direction investigates how human-specific genetic modifications influence brain development. Her lab uses imaging, genomics, organoids, and mouse genetics.
Areas of expertise
Cortical development, mouse genetics, post-transcriptional regulation, brain evolution, neurogenesis.
James Wells
Research interests
James Wells is an endowed professor at the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Research Foundation in the Division of Developmental Biology. He is the Director for Basic Research in the Division of Endocrinology and is the Chief Scientific Officer of the Center for Stem Cell and Organoid Medicine. Since starting his lab in 2002, his research has focused on the processes by which gastrointestinal and endocrine organs form in the developing embryo. Over the past 15 years his lab has used the molecular pathways underlying organogenesis to direct the differentiation of human pluripotent stem cells into organoids. Using both human organoids and vertebrate model systems, his lab continues to study organogenesis, identify new mechanisms underlying human congenital defects, and how the endocrine and digestive systems control nutrient homeostasis.
Areas of expertise
Endoderm organogenesis, gastrointestinal tract, endocrine cells, organoids, human pluripotent stem cells.
Associate Editors
Paul François
Research interests
Paul François is Associate Professor in the Physics department at McGill University (Montreal, Canada). His research focuses on the theoretical and computational modelling of biological processes, in close collaboration with experimentalists. Techniques used in his group range from gene network modelling using coupled stochastic differential equations to machine learning approaches such as computational evolution.
Areas of expertise
Theory, modelling, biophysics, segmentation, patterning, cellular decision-making
Matthias Lutolf
Research interests
Matthias Lutolf is a Professor of Life Sciences at EPFL’s Institute of Bioengineering, with a cross appointment in the Institute of Chemical Sciences and Engineering. His research program combines stem cell biology with engineering principles and quantitative thinking. His team uses cutting-edge bioengineering strategies for guiding stem-cell-based development for the assembly of next-generation organoids with improved reproducibility and physiological relevance.
Areas of expertise
Stem cells, organoids, self-organization, morphogenesis, bioengineering, tissue engineering.
Irene Miguel-Aliaga
Research interests
Irene Miguel-Aliaga is a Principal Group Leader at the Francis Crick Institute, London (UK). Her laboratory is interested in organ plasticity and “continued development”. At the interface of development and physiology, their work explores how and why organs that we commonly regard as fully developed change in size or function in response to environmental or internal challenges. They use the intestine and its neurons to tackle these questions, mainly in Drosophila melanogaster and mice.
Areas of expertise
Metabolic control of development, physiology, intestine, Drosophila, sex differences, organ plasticity.
Samantha Morris
Research interests
Samantha Morris is an Associate Professor of Genetics and Developmental Biology at Washington University in St. Louis. Her laboratory studies the mechanisms of cell reprogramming, focusing on how pioneer transcription factors drive gene expression, epigenetic, and functional changes in cell identity. To enable these studies, her group develops novel, open-source single-cell experimental and computational approaches to longitudinally record lineage and transcriptional regulation during directed reprogramming. With her team, Dr. Morris aims to engineer clinically relevant cell populations, translating new insights in cell fate specification into better models of disease and development.
Areas of expertise
Lineage reprogramming, single-cell biology, transcriptional regulation, early embryonic development.
Ken Poss
Research interests
Ken Poss is James B. Duke Professor of Cell Biology and Director of the Regeneration Next initiative at Duke University. He initiated his independent research program at Duke in 2003 to investigate regenerative biology in the zebrafish model system. Poss discovered heart regeneration in zebrafish, establishing an important natural model of robust cardiac repair, and his lab currently investigates mechanisms of regeneration in many additional tissues and injury contexts. His research goal is to elucidate key cellular behaviors and molecular regulatory events of regeneration, and ultimately for this information to inform how to improve the poor regenerative capacity of human tissues like the heart, spinal cord, and limbs.
Areas of expertise
Regeneration.
