Hopi Hoekstra | |
---|---|
Dean of the Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences | |
Assumed office August 1, 2023 | |
Preceded by | Claudine Gay |
Personal details | |
Born | July 1972 |
Alma mater | University of California,Berkeley (B.A.) University of Washington (Ph.D) |
Awards | National Academy of Sciences (2016) Richard Lounsbery Award (2015) C. Hart Merriam Award (2019) |
Danielle "Hopi" Elisabeth Hoekstra (born 1972) is an evolutionary biologist working at Harvard University in Cambridge,Massachusetts and serving as the Dean of its Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Her lab uses natural populations of rodents to study the genetic basis of adaptation. [1] [2] [3] [4] She is the C.Y. Chan Professor of Arts and Sciences and the Xiaomeng Tong and Yu Chen Professor of Life Sciences in the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology and the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology at Harvard University. [5] She is also the Curator of Mammals at the Museum of Comparative Zoology and a Harvard College Professor. In 2014,Hoekstra became a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator. [1] In 2016,she was elected to the National Academy of Sciences, [6] and in 2017,she was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. [7] Hoekstra became the Edgerley Family Dean of Harvard's Faculty of Arts and Sciences in August 2023. [8]
Hoekstra was born to a family of Dutch ancestry. Hoekstra's first name "Hopi" is derived from a Dutch term of endearment. [2] [9] Hoekstra attended Los Altos High School in California. She attended college at the University of California,Berkeley,where she initially intended to study political science. She has stated that at one point she wanted to become the U.S. ambassador to the Netherlands,but she was drawn into biology by a class on biomechanics taught by Robert J. Full. She went on to work in Full's lab,studying studying the biomechanics of animal locomotion. [2] [9] One factor for choosing UC Berkeley was that she wanted to play Pac10 volleyball,which she did for two years.
Hoekstra received her B.A. in Integrative Biology from the University of California,Berkeley. Before her graduate studies,she researched grizzly bears for a year in Yellowstone National Park. She obtained her Ph.D. in Zoology as a Howard Hughes Predoctoral Fellow at the University of Washington. [1] For her postdoctoral work,she studied the genetic basis of adaptive melanism in pocket mice at the University of Arizona. In 2003,she became an assistant professor at the University of California,San Diego. In 2007,she moved to Harvard University,where she received tenure in 2010. [1] [2] She has served on the advisory board of several foundations (e.g. Searle Scholars Program,Max Plank Society),magazines (Scientific American,Quanta) and journals (PNAS,Current Biology,PLoS Genetics,Development,bioRxiv). In June 2023,she was named as the Dean of Harvard's Faculty of Arts and Sciences,succeeding Claudine Gay,who had assumed the University's presidency a month prior. [10] Hoekstra assumed office on August 1,2023.
Hoekstra spent her scientific career working to understand the fundamental processes by which organisms,including humans,differ in the natural world. She capitalizes on natural variation in non-traditional model organisms,most notably the deer mouse, [1] a system she pioneered. [11] Her work is characterized by its an interdisciplinary approach,utilizing both field and lab experiments. Her laboratory’s overarching research strategy is to use tools from genetics,development and neuroscience to discover novel mechanisms by which evolution shapes biodiversity and,conversely,to use biodiversity as a tool to reveal general principles in biology.
Based on this work,she has been featured in National Geographic [12] and profiled in the New York Times. [13]
Hoekstra is best known for studying the genetic mechanisms that influence the evolution of highly complex natural behaviors. [14] In 2013,Hoekstra published an article in the journal Nature on the genetics of burrowing behavior in two sister species of Peromyscus mice;the oldfield mouse (P. polionotus),which builds elaborate burrows complete with an escape tunnel,and the deer mouse (P. maniculatis),which builds a simple and shallow nest. [14] [2] Using a combination of behavioral assays and classical genetic strategies,Hoekstra and her students identified four regions of DNA which control the length of the tunnels dug by the mice. [14] Trainees in her lab have also identified a specific gene that affects parental behavior [15] and also are genetically dissecting variation in other behaviors such as vocalization and skilled motor behavior.
Hoekstra started her career studying the evolution of mouse fur color and its significance for adaptation. [2] She was among the first to identify a specific DNA mutation and directly link it to fitness in the wild,a result found in many modern textbooks. In 2013,her team published an article in the journal Science ,describing how coat color in mice was controlled by nine separate mutations within a single gene,named "agouti." [3] Speaking about this discovery,Hoekstra said,"The question has always been whether evolution is dominated by these big leaps or smaller steps. When we first implicated the agouti gene,we could have stopped there and concluded that evolution takes these big steps as only one major gene was involved,but that would have been wrong. When we looked more closely,within this gene,we found that even within this single locus,there are,in fact,many small steps." [3] Her work supports the hypothesis that evolution can occur through incremental changes. [4] Recently,Hoekstra has found evidence linking the mutation the Agouti gene to survival in mice. [16] More specifically,the study showed how a sequence variant in the Agouti gene changes the phenotype and then linked those changes to changes in population allele frequency,demonstrating evolution of trait by natural selection. [17] More recently,her lab has discovered the developmental origins of complex color patterns. [18]
Hoekstra lives in Cambridge,Massachusetts,with her son and her husband,James Mallet. Mallet is also an evolutionary biologist at Harvard. [2]
Evolution is the change in the heritable characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. It occurs when evolutionary processes such as natural selection and genetic drift act on genetic variation, resulting in certain characteristics becoming more or less common within a population over successive generations. The process of evolution has given rise to biodiversity at every level of biological organisation.
Macroevolution usually means the evolution of large-scale structures and traits that go significantly beyond the intraspecific variation found in microevolution. In other words, macroevolution is the evolution of taxa above the species level.
Gene knockouts are a widely used genetic engineering technique that involves the targeted removal or inactivation of a specific gene within an organism's genome. This can be done through a variety of methods, including homologous recombination, CRISPR-Cas9, and TALENs.
In biology and genetics, the germline is the population of a multicellular organism's cells that develop into germ cells. In other words, they are the cells that form gametes, which can come together to form a zygote. They differentiate in the gonads from primordial germ cells into gametogonia, which develop into gametocytes, which develop into the final gametes. This process is known as gametogenesis.
In biology, adaptation has three related meanings. Firstly, it is the dynamic evolutionary process of natural selection that fits organisms to their environment, enhancing their evolutionary fitness. Secondly, it is a state reached by the population during that process. Thirdly, it is a phenotypic trait or adaptive trait, with a functional role in each individual organism, that is maintained and has evolved through natural selection.
Mary Frances Lyon was an English geneticist best known for her discovery of X-chromosome inactivation, an important biological phenomenon.
Susan Randi Wessler, ForMemRS, is an American plant molecular biologist and geneticist. She is Distinguished Professor of Genetics at the University of California, Riverside (UCR).
Agouti-signaling protein is a protein that in humans is encoded by the ASIP gene. It is responsible for the distribution of melanin pigment in mammals. Agouti interacts with the melanocortin 1 receptor to determine whether the melanocyte produces phaeomelanin, or eumelanin. This interaction is responsible for making distinct light and dark bands in the hairs of animals such as the agouti, which the gene is named after. In other species such as horses, agouti signalling is responsible for determining which parts of the body will be red or black. Mice with wildtype agouti will be grey-brown, with each hair being partly yellow and partly black. Loss of function mutations in mice and other species cause black fur coloration, while mutations causing expression throughout the whole body in mice cause yellow fur and obesity.
CLOCK is a gene encoding a basic helix-loop-helix-PAS transcription factor that is known to affect both the persistence and period of circadian rhythms.
Lethal alleles are alleles that cause the death of the organism that carries them. They are usually a result of mutations in genes that are essential for growth or development. Lethal alleles may be recessive, dominant, or conditional depending on the gene or genes involved.
In molecular cloning and biology, a gene knock-in refers to a genetic engineering method that involves the one-for-one substitution of DNA sequence information in a genetic locus or the insertion of sequence information not found within the locus. Typically, this is done in mice since the technology for this process is more refined and there is a high degree of shared sequence complexity between mice and humans. The difference between knock-in technology and traditional transgenic techniques is that a knock-in involves a gene inserted into a specific locus, and is thus a "targeted" insertion. It is the opposite of gene knockout.
The melanocortin 1 receptor (MC1R), also known as melanocyte-stimulating hormone receptor (MSHR), melanin-activating peptide receptor, or melanotropin receptor, is a G protein–coupled receptor that binds to a class of pituitary peptide hormones known as the melanocortins, which include adrenocorticotropic hormone (ACTH) and the different forms of melanocyte-stimulating hormone (MSH). It is coupled to Gαs and upregulates levels of cAMP by activating adenylyl cyclase in cells expressing this receptor. It is normally expressed in skin and melanocytes, and to a lesser degree in periaqueductal gray matter, astrocytes and leukocytes. In skin cancer, MC1R is highly expressed in melanomas but not carcinomas.
Susan L. Ackerman is an American neuroscientist and geneticist. Her work has highlighted some of the genetic and biochemical factors that are involved in the development of the central nervous system and age-related neurodegeneration. Her research is aimed at helping scientists understand what causes several types of neurodegeneration in mammals. This research, and others' like it, may lead to cures for neurodegenerative diseases. Ackerman is a professor at University of California San Diego. She was formerly a professor at the Jackson Laboratory and the Sackler School of Graduate Biomedical Sciences at Tufts University. She also serves as an adjunct professor at the University of Maine, Orono. Ackerman was an associate geneticist at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts.
Elizabeth Jane Robertson is a British developmental biologist based at the Sir William Dunn School of Pathology, University of Oxford. She is Professor of Developmental Biology at Oxford and a Wellcome Trust Principal Research Fellow. She is best known for her pioneering work in developmental genetics, showing that genetic mutations could be introduced into the mouse germ line by using genetically altered embryonic stem cells. This discovery opened up a major field of experimentation for biologists and clinicians.
Ying-Hui Fu is a Taiwanese-American biologist and human geneticist who has made important contributions to understanding the genetics of many neurological disorders. Her chief discoveries include describing Mendelian sleep phenotypes, identifying causative genes and mutations for circadian rhythm disorders, and characterizing genetic forms of demyelinating degenerative disorders. Fu is currently a professor of neurology at the University of California, San Francisco. She was elected to the US National Academy of Sciences in 2018.
The ALX3 gene, also known as aristaless-like homeobox 3, is a protein coding gene that provides instructions to build a protein which is a member of the homeobox protein family. This grouping regulates patterns of anatomical development. The gene encodes a nuclear protein that functions as a transcription regulator involved in cell-type differentiation and development.
Nobuyo N. Maeda is a Japanese geneticist and medical researcher, who works on complex human diseases including atherosclerosis, diabetes and high blood pressure, and is particularly known for creating the first mouse model for atherosclerosis. Maeda has worked in the United States since 1978; as of 2017, she is the Robert H. Wagner Distinguished Professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
The agouti gene, the Agouti-signaling protein (ASIP) is responsible for variations in color in many species. Agouti works with extension to regulate the color of melanin which is produced in hairs. The agouti protein causes red to yellow pheomelanin to be produced, while the competing molecule α-MSH signals production of brown to black eumelanin. In wildtype mice, alternating cycles of agouti and α-MSH production cause agouti coloration. Each hair has bands of yellow which grew during agouti production, and black which grew during α-MSH production. Wildtype mice also have light-colored bellies. The hairs there are a creamy color the whole length because the agouti protein was produced the whole time the hairs were growing.
Marisa Bartolomei is an American cell biologist, the Perelman Professor of Cell and Developmental Biology and Co-Director of the Epigenetics Institute at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. Her research considers epigenetic processes including genomic imprinting. She was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2021.
Ellen V. Rothenberg is an American biologist who is an Edward B. Lewis Professor of Biology at the California Institute of Technology. She investigates the molecular mechanisms that underpin lineage choice. She is an elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences.