Julie Ahringer is a Group Leader at the Gurdon Institute at the University of Cambridge.
She obtained her Ph.D. while working with Judith Kimble at the University of Wisconsin, and carried out postdoctoral
work at the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology with John White.
Her laboratory carried out the first systematic inactivation of the majority of genes in an animal,
through constructing and screening a genome-wide RNAi feeding library for Caenorhabditis elegans.
Her group studies how cells become polarized and how polarity information is transduced to downstream events such as
asymmetric spindle positioning. In addition, they are investigating the roles of chromatin remodelling in
developmental decisions.
Dr Spyros Artavanis-Tsakonas is the K. Isselbacher-C.P. Schwarz Professor of Cell Biology at the Harvard Medical School
and is Director of Developmental Biology and Cancer at the Massachusetts General Hospital Center for Cancer Research.
He also holds the Chair of Developmental Biology and Genetics at the Collége de France. From 1990 until 1998,
Dr Artavanis-Tsakonas was a Professor in the Departments of Cell Biology and Biology, and Director of the
Molecular and Developmental Neurobiology Program of the Boyer Center of Molecular Medicine at Yale University School
of Medicine. At Yale, he served also as the Director of the Biological Sciences Division and was a Howard Hughes
Medical Institute Investigator. He is a founder and member of the Scientific Advisory Board of Exelixis
Pharmaceuticals Inc., Cellzome GmbH and Anadys Pharmaceuticals, Inc. He is also a founder and the Chairman
of the board of Fondation Santé, a non-profit organization devoted to health issues.
Cori Bargmann is a professor of anatomy and of biochemistry and biophysics at the University of California
San Francisco (UCSF), and an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. She received her Ph.D.
while working with Robert Weinberg at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Whitehead Institute,
and did her postdoctoral work with Robert Horvitz at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology before moving
to UCSF in 1991. Her lab uses genetic approaches in Caenorhabditis elegans to study neuronal development and
olfactory behaviours. Ongoing projects examine pathways of axon guidance and synapse formation, the molecular
mechanisms of olfaction and chemosensation, and the assembly and function of neural circuits for specific
behaviours.
Mariann Bienz received her Ph.D. degree from the University of Zürich, Switzerland, in 1981. She then joined the
laboratory of John Gurdon at the Medical Research Council (MRC) Laboratory of Molecular Biology (LMB) in Cambridge, UK,
where she worked on the control of heat-shock gene expression in Xenopus oocytes. In 1986, she became a Faculty
Member at the University of Zürich, where she started to work on the transcriptional control of Hox genes in
Drosophila development in response to positional information. This led her into Wnt signalling, the
focus of her work since her return to the MRC LMB as a Senior Staff Member in 1991. Her recent focus has been on
exploiting Drosophila to study the function of the APC tumour suppressor, and to discover new Wnt
signalling components. Mariann Bienz is an EMBO Member and a Fellow of the Royal Society.
Marianne Bronner-Fraser is currently the Albert Billings Ruddock Professor of Biology at the California Institute of Technology.
She received her B.Sc. in biophysics from Brown University and her Ph.D. in biophysics from Johns Hopkins University.
She was Chair of the Faculty at Caltech from 2001-2003 and Co-director of the Embryology Course at the Marine Biological
Laboratory at Woods Hole, Massachusetts, from 1997-2001. Her research centres on the early formation of the nervous system
in vertebrate embryos, with emphasis on formation and migration of neural crest cells using a combination of embryological,
molecular and genomic approaches.
Matthew Freeman has been a Group Leader at the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, UK,
since 1992. His group studies intercellular signalling, especially the mechanisms and developmental logic of EGF receptor
signalling in Drosophila. Having done his Ph.D. with David Glover at Imperial College, London, Matthew
did a postdoc in Gerry Rubin's lab in Berkeley, where he participated in a large-scale enhancer trap screen
to look for genes involved in eye development. It later became clear that several of these were involved in
EGF receptor signalling. Recently, his group has discovered the rhomboid family of intramembrane serine proteases,
which now provide a second research focus.
Iva Greenwald
Iva Greenwald is a professor at Columbia University and an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
Iva graduated from Cornell University, did doctoral work at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in
the laboratory of H. Robert Horvitz, and did postdoctoral work at the Medical Research Council (MRC) Laboratory
of Molecular Biology under the sponsorship of Jonathan Hodgkin. She began working on cell-cell interactions and
lin-12/Notch signalling in Caenorhabditis elegans in her last year as a graduate student, and has continued
working in this area ever since. Her main research efforts have been concerned with elucidating the mechanism
and roles of lin-12/Notch signalling and how lin-12/Notch signalling is modulated during cell-fate decisions.
During his graduate work in Oxford under the supervision of M. Fischberg, John Gurdon first achieved successful nuclear
transplantation in Xenopus. While still at Oxford, he obtained the first normal sexually mature adult vertebrates
by transplanting nuclei from somatic endoderm, and subsequently intestine cells. He moved to the Cambridge Medical
Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology under the leadership of Max Perutz in 1971, where he discovered the
ability of frog eggs and oocytes to translate injected mRNA into proteins. He later moved to the Department of
Zoology in Cambridge and soon after that became Chairman of the new Wellcome Trust/Cancer Research Campaign
Institute of Cancer and Developmental Biology in Cambridge. During that time, he worked on the question of how
cells interpret their position in a morphogen gradient. Most recently, he has returned to the problem on which
he originally worked — namely, the reprogramming of transplanted nuclei.
He now works on the mechanism of nuclear reprogramming.
Hiroshi Hamada is a professor in the Graduate School of Frontier Biosciences at Osaka University. His laboratory uses the
mouse system to study embryonic patterning and organogenesis. Prompted by the finding of Lefty, a left-right asymmetrically
expressed TGFβ member, his group has been investigating how body axes are established. Hiroshi received his M.D.
and Ph.D. from Okayama University in Japan, and worked for the National Institutes of Health (NIH), USA and Newfoundland,
Canada for 9 years. His interest in development stems from earlier work on embryonal carcinoma cells, which he performed
in Canada. His current interests are the mechanism of symmetry breaking and the origin of body axes.
H. Robert Horvitz is the David H. Koch Professor of Biology in the Department of Biology at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. He is an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical
Institute and a member of the MIT McGovern Institute for Brain Research and of the MIT Center for Cancer Research.
His primary research interests concern the developmental and behavioural genetics of the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans.
He received S.B. degrees in mathematics and in economics from MIT in 1968 and a Ph.D. in biology from
Harvard University in 1974. He was a postdoctoral fellow at the Medical Research Council Laboratory of
Molecular Biology in Cambridge, England, from 1974 to 1977 and joined the MIT faculty in 1978. He was
President of the Genetics Society of America in 1995 and shared the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine
with Sydney Brenner and John Sulston in 2002.
Philip Ingham is Professor of Developmental Genetics and Head of the Department of Biomedical Science at the University of Sheffield.
After graduating in genetics from Cambridge University in 1977, he did research for his D.Phil at the University of Sussex,
isolating and characterizing the Drosophila homeotic mutation trithorax. Following a short postdoctoral stay in Strasbourg,
he joined David Ish-Horowicz's group at the Imperial Cancer Research Fund (ICRF) Mill Hill Laboratories, where he
performed some of the first molecular studies of the Drosophila segmentation hierarchy. In 1986, he established his own
research group at the ICRF Developmental Biology Unit in Oxford. A major focus of his research has been the elucidation of
the Hedgehog signalling pathway and its developmental roles: his lab identified and characterized the two subunits of
the Hedgehog receptor, Patched and Smoothened in Drosophila and, in 1993, in collaboration with A. McMahon and C. Tabin,
cloned the Hedgehog gene family in vertebrates. Currently, his research focuses on the specification and differentiation
of muscle in the zebrafish embryo.
Alexandra Joyner is the Co-coordinator of the Developmental Genetics Program at the Skirball Institute of Biomolecular
Medicine within New York University School of Medicine. She is a professor in the Department of Cell Biology and is the
Skirball Foundation Professor of Genetics, as well as a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator. A native Canadian,
she received her B.Sc. and Ph.D. from the University of Toronto, where she developed one of the first retroviral
vectors to study mouse haematopoietic stem cells. During her postdoctoral research with Gail Martin at University
College San Francisco, she cloned some of the first mammalian homeobox genes. She was then a Senior Scientist in the
Samuel Lunenfeld Research Institute at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto, where she pioneered genetic approaches,
including the gene trap, in mice. Her research focuses on genetic and cellular events that underlie mouse midbrain
and cerebellum development and Hedgehog signalling.
Jürgen Knoblich is a senior scientist at the Institute of Molecular Biotechnology (IMBA) in Vienna. After graduating in
biochemistry from the University of Tübingen, he pursued his Ph.D. in the laboratory of Christian Lehner at the Max Planck
Institute, where he studied the role of cyclin proteins in cell-cycle progression in Drosophila. For his postdoc, he joined
the laboratory of Lily and Yuh Nung Jan at University of California San Francisco to analyse the mechanisms of asymmetric
cell division. In 1997, he became a junior group leader at the Institute of Molecular Pathology in Vienna and joined
IMBA in 2004. His group tries to understand how cell divisions are oriented, how proteins are segregated into one of the
two daughter cells during asymmetric cell division, and how these segregating determinants establish a particular
developmental fate in one but not the other daughter cell.
Born in Germany, Ruth Lehmann was introduced to fly development first in Gerold Schubiger's lab at the University of
Washington, Seattle and then during her Diploma thesis in the laboratory of Jose Campos Ortega, where she studied
the neurogenic genes. She completed her doctoral thesis in 1985 in the laboratory of Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard,
where she participated in the identification of maternal-effect genes that organize the embryonic axis. After
postdoctoral training at the Medical Research Council (MRC) in Cambridge, UK in the laboratory of the late
Mike Wilcox, she joined the Whitehead Institute and was appointed assistant professor at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1988. Molecular characterization of nanos, pumilio and oskar in her lab
showed that RNA localization within a cell is tightly linked to translational regulation. In 1996,
Dr Lehmann moved to the Skirball Institute at New York University School of Medicine, where she is also
an investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the Julius Raynes Professor of Developmental
Genetics. Her recent research interests focus on the control of germ cell specification and migration and
germ line stem cell development in Drosophila.
Andrew Lumsden received his BA in Natural Sciences from the University of Cambridge. After two years as a Fulbright
Scholar at Yale University, studying evolutionary biology, he returned to the UK and took his PhD in developmental biology
at the University of London. He is now a Professor at King's College London and is Director of the Medical Research Council's
Centre for Developmental Neurobiology at Guy's Hospital. His research focuses on cellular and molecular mechanisms
underlying early events in vertebrate nervous system development — in particular, regionalization and patterning
of the brain primordium and the guidance of axons. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society.
Gail Martin received her Ph.D. in molecular biology from the University of California at Berkeley and did postdoctoral
work at University College London and the University of California at San Francisco (UCSF). She joined the UCSF
faculty in 1976, where she is now a Professor of Anatomy and Director of the UCSF Program in Developmental Biology.
She is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a member of the US National Academy of Sciences.
In 2002, she was awarded the E.G. Conklin Medal by the Society of Developmental Biology. Early in her scientific
career, she pioneered the isolation of embryonic stem cells from normal mouse embryos. Her current research is
focused on the mechanisms that establish the basic body plan of the vertebrate embryo and control the outgrowth
and patterning of organ primordia, with a particular emphasis on the role played by fibroblast growth factor (FGF)
signalling in these processes.
Ivor Mason is Professor of Developmental Biology and Assistant Director of the Medical Research Council Centre for
Developmental Neurobiology at King's College London. After an undergraduate degree in zoology at the University of
Oxford, Ivor obtained a PhD studying early differentiation decisions in the mouse embryo with Brigid Hogan. He was
a postdoctoral fellow in the MRC Brain Development Programme at University College London, directed by Martin Raff
and Anne Mudge, where he developed his interest in instructive signalling during brain development. His current
research focuses on how signals from localized signalling centres or 'organizers' serve to pattern the vertebrate
brain and to influence the development of adjacent tissues. He is also interested in how such organizers are
established and positioned within the developing neuroepithelium.
Fumio Matsuzaki is a group director at the RIKEN Center for Developmental Biology in Japan.
Before joining this new institute, he was a professor in the Institute of Development, Aging and Cancer at
Tohoku University. He received his Ph.D. at the University of Tokyo and did postdoctoral research in Japan
and the United States. He then returned to Japan, initiating his work on Drosophila neural development at
the National Institute for Neuroscience and discovered the asymmetric segregation of Prospero during neural
progenitor cell division. His main research interests are directed at developing a better understanding of
how the nervous system is organized. His group is currently focusing on the roles and mechanisms that underlie
asymmetric division in Drosophila and vertebrate neurogenesis.
Randall Moon is an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Professor of Pharmacology at the University of
Washington School of Medicine in Seattle, Washington. He received his Ph.D. in zoology at the University of Washington,
studying translational control in sea-urchin eggs with Merrill Hille. As a postdoctoral fellow with Elias Lazarides at Caltech,
he worked on cloning components of the membrane cytoskeleton of chicken erythroid cells and studying how the proteins assemble.
After returning to Seattle in 1985, he began working on early Xenopus development. In 1988, he discovered, in a
collaboration with Andrew McMahon, that ectopic expression of Wnt1 leads to duplication of the embryonic axes in
Xenopus embryos, resulting in his entire laboratory switching to analysis of Wnts. The laboratory currently
uses cultured cells, mice, zebrafish and Xenopus to contribute to an understanding of the roles and mechanisms of
Wnt signalling in development and disease, and to help develop lead therapies based on manipulation of Wnt signalling.
Norbert Perrimon is a professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School. Of French nationality, he was educated at the
University of Paris IV, where he majored in biochemistry. His thesis, with Madeleine Gans as adviser, was on Drosophila genetics.
He moved to Case Western Reserve University as a postdoctoral research fellow with Anthony Mahowald and became a
Lucille P. Markey scholar in biomedical sciences while in Cleveland. He then assumed his present position at
Harvard Medical School. Over the years, Perrimon and his colleagues have made a number of contributions to
our understanding of the structure of signal-transduction pathways. In addition, his laboratory has developed
a number of techniques that have proven useful for identifying gene functions. Recently, most of his efforts
have focused on applying the RNA interference methodology to high-throughput screening in Drosophila cells,
with the ultimate goal of studying genetic redundancy in biological networks.
Olivier Pourquié's research is aimed at understanding the molecular basis of vertebrate body-axis segmentation and patterning
during development. Pourquié's lab discovered a molecular oscillator, called the 'segmentation clock', that is involved in
the metamerization of the vertebrate body axis. They further showed that translation of this pulsation into the reiterated
arrangement of segment boundaries along the antero-posterior axis involves a gradient of FGF signalling that is generated
by an unexpected RNA decay mechanism. His work has relied heavily on the use of the chick embryo as a model system,
but it now also largely involves mouse genetics. Olivier Pourquié did his Ph.D. and postdoctoral work with Nicole Le
Douarin at the Institut d'Embryologie du College de France at Nogent sur Marne. He then became a group leader at the
Developmental Biology Institute of Marseille, France, before relocating his lab to the Stowers Institute for Medical
Research in Kansas City, USA.
Janet Rossant is a senior investigator at the Samuel Lunenfeld Research Institute, Mount Sinai Hospital, Toronto.
She is also a professor in the Department of Molecular and Medical Genetics and the Department of Obstetrics/Gynaecology,
University of Toronto. Her research interests centre on understanding the genetic control of normal and abnormal
development in the early mouse embryo using both cellular and genetic manipulation techniques. Janet Rossant trained
at the Universities of Cambridge and Oxford, United Kingdom and has been in Canada since 1977, first at Brock University
and then in Toronto. She is a Fellow of both the Royal Societies of London and Canada and a Distinguished Investigator of
the Canadian Institutes of Health Research.
John Rubenstein is the Nina Ireland Distinguished Professor of Child Psychiatry at UCSF.
He obtained a PhD in Biophysics with Harden McConnell and James Rothman at Stanford (physical properties and biogenesis of membranes)
and obtained postdoctoral training with François Jacob and Jean–François Nicolas at the Pasteur Institute in Paris
(antisense RNA, use of retroviral vectors in mouse embryos). During his clinical fellowship, he identified several
genes that regulate forebrain development (Dlx2, Tbr1), and since joining UCSF he has investigated forebrain
patterning and differentiation through: analysis of embryonic forebrain organization (with Luis Puelles);
characterization of patterning centres; analysis of transcription factors that control regional and
cell-type specification; molecular characterization of cell and axonal migrations. His work with the Dlx
genes has also led to analysis of regional specification of craniofacial primordia.
Yoshiki Sasai is a group director at the Center for Developmental Biology, RIKEN Kobe. He received a M.D. degree in
1986 and a Ph.D. degree in 1993 from Kyoto University School of Medicine. After an internship in internal medicine, he studied
molecular neurobiology with Shigetada Nakanishi, and identified the mammalian HES gene family as a negative
regulator of differentiation. Then, he worked with Eddy De Robertis at University of California Los Angeles
and isolated the neural inducer chordin in Xenopus. He got an associate professor position at Kyoto
University in 1996, and a full professor position in 1998. He moved to RIKEN in 2003 and is currently
working on early neural patterning of vertebrates and in vitro neural differentiation of embryonic stem cells.
Jonathan Slack is Head of Biology and Biochemistry at the University of Bath. After doing a Ph.D. at Edinburgh University
and a postdoc at the Middlesex Hospital Medical School, he became a scientist with the Imperial Cancer Research Fund and
studied the development of the early embryo, using the frog Xenopus as an experimental organism.
He identified fibroblast growth factors as inducing factors and showed they had a prominent role in controlling
the formation of the head-to-tail pattern in the embryo. He moved to Bath in 1995 and his current work is
focused on the mechanisms of regeneration of missing parts and transdifferentiation of one tissue type into another.
In addition to 150 research and review papers in scientific journals, he has written three books.
From Egg to Embryo (1983, 1991) served to introduce experimental embryology to molecular biologists.
Egg and Ego (1999) is a light-hearted account of life in academic science. Essential Developmental Biology (2001)
is an undergraduate textbook. He is a member of the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO), and was awarded
the Waddington Medal of the British Society for Developmental Biology in 2002.
Jim Smith obtained his Ph.D. in 1979, having studied chick limb development under the supervision of Lewis Wolpert.
He then moved to Harvard Medical School to work with Chuck Stiles on the mode of action of platelet-derived growth factor,
and then to the Imperial Cancer Research Fund in Mill Hill, where, with Jonathan Slack, he studied inductive interactions
in Xenopus laevis. It was here that he became interested in mesoderm induction, and on moving to the
National Institute for Medical Research he discovered that the XTC cell line secretes a mesoderm-inducing factor,
which he identified as activin. With Jeremy Green, Jim found that different concentrations of activin induce the
expression of different genes, indicating that gradients of TGF-β family members might establish domains of
gene expression in the early embryo. Jim also studies the roles of T-box genes in the early embryo, and on
moving to the Wellcome Trust/Cancer Research UK Gurdon Institute in Cambridge in 2000, he became an advocate
of the use of Xenopus tropicalis as well as Xenopus laevis as an experimental organism.
Didier Stainier is Professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics at the University of California at San
Francisco (UCSF). He did his Ph.D. with Wally Gilbert at Harvard University, where he studied the development of the
mouse trigeminal sensory system. As Helen Hay Whitney postdoctoral fellow with Mark Fishman at the Massachusetts
General Hospital/Harvard Medical School, he pioneered the use of the zebrafish to study the development of the
cardiovascular system and participated in the large-scale genetic screen that took place in Wolfgang Driever's
laboratory. Since moving to UCSF in 1995, his research interests have expanded to include the development of
endodermal organs, such as the pancreas and liver, addressing issues of both cell differentiation and tissue
morphogenesis.
A native of Uruguay, Claudio Stern studied biological sciences at the University of Sussex and received postdoctoral
training at University College London. After a year in Cambridge as a university demonstrator, he became a university
lecturer at Oxford in 1985. In 1994, he was appointed Professor and Chairman of the Department of Genetics and Development
at Columbia University (New York), where he remained for 7 years before returning to University College London as the J.Z.
Young Professor and Head of the Department of Anatomy and Developmental Biology. His research interests concern the
mechanisms of cell commitment and embryonic pattern formation in vertebrate embryos, concentrating on gastrulation,
the mechanisms of neural induction and embryonic segmentation (somites and their relationship to the organization of
the developing central and peripheral nervous systems).
Daniel St Johnston is a Wellcome Trust Principal Research Fellow in the Wellcome Trust/Cancer Research UK Gurdon
Institute at the University of Cambridge. Daniel did his Ph.D. with William Gelbart at Harvard University on the
molecular characterization of decapentaplegic (dpp). He then moved to the Max Planck Institute for Developmental
Biology in Tübingen to work with Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard on Drosophila axis formation, and retuned to Cambridge
to start his own group in 1991. His main research interests are understanding the origin of anterior-posterior
polarity in Drosophila, and using the oocyte as a model system to analyse the mechanisms of mRNA
localization and cell polarization.
Patrick Tam is head of the Embryology Unit at the Children's Medical Research Institute in Sydney, Australia. He is a Senior
Principal Research Fellow of the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia and holds a research professorial
appointment in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Sydney. His research focuses on elucidating the cellular and
molecular mechanisms of gastrulation, organizer function in the establishment of body plan, and the patterning of the
craniofacial tissues, somites and gut during mouse development. He pioneers the application of micromanipulation and embryo
culture for analysis of cell potency and lineage specification in normal and mutant embryos. His other current research
interest is focused on using mouse models to examine the pathogenesis of X-linked diseases.
Alan Trounson, Ph.D., is Professor of Stem Cell Sciences and Director of Monash Immunology and Stem Cell Laboratories at
Monash University. He is also the Founder and Executive Vice Chairman of the National Biotechnology Centre of Excellence,
as well as Global Scientific Strategy Advisor. He graduated from the University of New South Wales in 1971 with an M.Sc.
in Wool and Pastoral Sciences and was awarded a Ph.D. in animal embryology by Sydney University in 1974. He worked
as a Dalgety Research Fellow at Cambridge University during 1974-1976. He has worked at Monash University for many
years — he was appointed senior research fellow in 1977; by 1984, he was a reader in the Department of
Obstetrics and Gynecology; in 1985, he was appointed Director of the Centre for Early Human Development; was
awarded a Personal Chair in Obstetrics and Gynaecology/Paediatrics in 1991; and, in 2003, was awarded a Personal
Chair as Professor of Stem Cell Sciences. The Faculties of Medical Sciences and Physical Education and
Physiotherapy, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Brussels, Belgium, awarded him a Doctor Honoris Causa in 2003.
His scientific accomplishments include the pioneering of human in vitro fertilization; the diagnosis of
inherited genetic disease in pre-implantation embryos; the discovery and production of human embryonic
stem cells and their ability to be directed into neurones, prostate tissue and respiratory tissue.
Christopher A. Walsh is Bullard Professor of Neurology and Director of the Combined MD-PhD graduate program at
Harvard Medical School, and is an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.
He received his MD and PhD degrees from the University of Chicago, and did postdoctoral training in neurology and genetics at
Harvard. His lab uses mapping to identify genes that are essential for normal development of human cerebral cortex,
and studies the function of these genes in animals. Dr Walsh has received a Jacob Javitts Distinguished Investigator
Award from the NINDS, the Derek Denny-Brown Award from the American Neurological Institute, the Dreifuss-Penry Award
from the American Academy of Neurology, and the Research Award from the American Epilepsy Society.
David Wilkinson is Head of the Division of Developmental Neurobiology and the Genetics and Development Group of Divisions
at the National Institute for Medical Research (NIMR), London. He received his B.Sc. degree and carried out Ph.D.
studies on cell differentiation in Dictyostelium — both at the Department of Biochemistry, University of Leeds.
His postdoctoral research was carried out at the Fox Chase Cancer Center, Philadelphia, on sea-urchin development,
and then at the NIMR on gene expression during mouse embryogenesis. David Wilkinson became a group leader at the
NIMR in 1988. Since then, his research interests have focused on molecular mechanisms that underlie the segmental
patterning of the vertebrate hindbrain - in particular, the regulation of boundary formation, cell migration
and cell differentiation.
Lewis Wolpert is Professor of Biology as Applied to Medicine at University College, London. Originally trained as a
civil engineer in South Africa, he moved into research in cell and developmental biology in 1955 under the
guidance of J.F. Danielli at Kings College, London. His main contributions are related to cytokinesis, morphogenesis
of the sea-urchin embryo, and the concept of positional information in relation to pattern formation, with special
reference to the chick limb.
