Magdalena Bezanilla is a biologist and the Ernest Evert Just 1907 Professor at Dartmouth College. Bezanilla is known for her research into molecular mechanisms that affect cell shape.
Magdalena was an undergraduate at the University of California, Santa Barbara, majoring in physics. She received her doctoral degree in biochemistry and cellular and molecular biology from Johns Hopkins University. [1]
Bezanilla was an associate professor of biology at University Of Massachusetts, Amherst. [2] Magdalena and her colleagues developed a technique called multi-gene silencing to simultaneously silence genes in a multicellular organism. [1] She joined Dartmouth University as the Ernest Evert Just 1907 Professor in 2017. [3]
Her work focuses on the configuration of plant cell walls and supporting structures that govern a cell’s shape, internal organization, and patterns of growth and development. She has also pioneered the use of a moss called Physcomitrella as a model system in her research. Bezanilla developed the use of moss physcomitrella patens as a model system to figure out proteins in the plant cell regulate growth and morphogenesis. [4] [3]
In 2023, Bezanilla was named a fellow of the American Society of Plant Biologists. [5] Bezanilla was the first woman to win the Golden Spore Award in 2022 from the International Molecular Moss Science Society. [6] She also received the CAREER award from the National Science Foundation. [1] In 2010, she was awarded the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers. [1] Bezanilla was awarded the Packard Fellowship for Science and Engineering in 2007 for her research into molecular mechanisms that affect cell shape. [7]
The Stanford University School of Medicine is the medical school of Stanford University and is located in Stanford, California, United States. It traces its roots to the Medical Department of the University of the Pacific, founded in San Francisco in 1858. This medical institution, then called Cooper Medical College, was acquired by Stanford in 1908. The medical school moved to the Stanford campus near Palo Alto, California, in 1959.
Elaine V. Fuchs is an American cell biologist known for her work on the biology and molecular mechanisms of mammalian skin and skin diseases, who helped lead the modernization of dermatology. Fuchs pioneered reverse genetics approaches, which assess protein function first and then assess its role in development and disease. In particular, Fuchs researches skin stem cells and their production of hair and skin. She is an investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the Rebecca C. Lancefield Professor of Mammalian Cell Biology and Development at The Rockefeller University.
Physcomitrella patens is a synonym of Physcomitrium patens, the spreading earthmoss. It is a moss, a bryophyte used as a model organism for studies on plant evolution, development, and physiology.
Nina Vsevolod Fedoroff is an American molecular biologist known for her research in life sciences and biotechnology, especially transposable elements or jumping genes. and plant stress response. In 2007, President George W. Bush awarded her the National Medal of Science, she is also a member of the United States National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the European Academy of Sciences, and the American Academy of Microbiology.
Ralf Reski is a German professor of plant biotechnology and former dean of the Faculty of Biology of the University of Freiburg. He is also affiliated to the French École supérieure de biotechnologie Strasbourg (ESBS) and Senior Fellow at the Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies.
Alanna Schepartz is an American professor and scientist. She is currently the T.Z. and Irmgard Chu Distinguished Chair in Chemistry at University of California, Berkeley. She was formerly the Sterling Professor of Chemistry at Yale University.
A moss bioreactor is a photobioreactor used for the cultivation and propagation of mosses. It is usually used in molecular farming for the production of recombinant protein using transgenic moss. In environmental science moss bioreactors are used to multiply peat mosses e.g. by the Mossclone consortium to monitor air pollution.
Erin K. O'Shea is an American biologist who is president of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI). In 2013, she was named HHMI's vice president and chief scientific officer. Prior to that, she was a professor of molecular and cellular biology and chemistry and chemical biology at Harvard University. In 2016, her appointment as future, and first woman, president of HHMI was announced. She has been a Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) investigator since 2000.
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.
Joanne Chory was an American plant biologist and geneticist. She was a professor and director of the Plant Molecular and Cellular Biology Laboratory at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies and an investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
Virginia Walbot is an American agriculturalist and botanist who is a professor in the Department of Biology at Stanford University. She investigates maize development with a focus on factors involved in male sterility.
Natasha V. Raikhel is a professor of plant cell biology at University of California, Riverside and a member of the National Academy of Sciences.
Xuemei Chen is a Chinese-American molecular biologist. She is the Furuta Chair Professor in the Department of Botany and Plant Sciences at the University of California, Riverside. She was elected to the US National Academy of Sciences in 2013.
Francisco Bezanilla is a Chilean-American scientist and professor at the University of Chicago. He is a past president of the Biophysical Society and a member of the National Academy of Sciences.
Mary Lou Guerinot is an American molecular geneticist who works as Ronald and Deborah Harris Professor in the Sciences at Dartmouth College. Her research concerns the cellular uptake and regulation of metal ions.
Sabeeha Sabanali Merchant is a professor of plant biology at the University of California, Berkeley. She studies the photosynthetic metabolism and metalloenzymes In 2010 Merchant led the team that sequenced the Chlamydomonas genome. She was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 2012.
Celeste M. Nelson is a Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering and the Director of the Program in Engineering Biology at Princeton University. She is a Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE) and was a finalist in the 2017 and 2018 Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists.
Shruti Naik is an Indian American scientist who is known for her interdisciplinary research in immunology and adult stem cell biology. She is an Associate Professor of Dermatology, Immunology and Immunotherapy, and Institute of Regenerative Medicine and Director of the Tissue Repair Program at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Her lab combines approaches from the fields of immunology, microbiology, stem cell biology, and cancer biology with cutting-edge imaging and sequencing technologies to discover new ways of treating inflammatory diseases.
Alice Cheung is an American biochemist who is a professor of molecular biology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Her research considers the molecular and cellular biology of polarization. She was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2020.
Shu-ou Shan is a Chinese American biologist who is a professor at the California Institute of Technology. Her research combines mechanistic enzymology with biophysical characterization techniques to understand biogenesis pathways. She was awarded the 2024 National Academy of Sciences Award in Molecular Biology.