Nancy Papalopulu

Last updated
Nancy Papalopulu

FMedSci FRSB
N Papalopulu.jpg
Papalopulu in 2014
Born
Athanasia Papalopulu

(1962-03-26) 26 March 1962 (age 59)
Nationality Greek
Alma mater Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (BSc)
University of London (PhD)
Awards EMBO Member (2012)
Scientific career
Fields Developmental neurobiology
Institutions University of Manchester
University of Cambridge
Thesis Analysis of vertebrate homeobox containing genes  (1991)
Doctoral advisor Robb Krumlauf
Website papalopululab.wordpress.com OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg

Athanasia Papalopulu (born 1962) FMedSci FRSB is a Wellcome Trust senior research fellow and Professor of Developmental Neuroscience in the School of Biological Sciences, University of Manchester. [1] [2] [3]

Contents

Education

After completing her undergraduate degree in Pharmacy at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece, Nancy Papalopulu moved to London in 1986 to do a PhD at the National Institute for Medical Research, where she became one of Robb Krumlauf's first graduate students. [4] [5] There she studied the role of Hox genes in patterning the nervous system. [6] She completed her PhD in 1991. [7]

Career and research

In 1991, she moved to La Jolla, California to do postdoctoral work under the supervision of Chris Kintner at the Salk Institute. [8] There she continued to investigate factors controlling neuronal patterning in the vertebrate embryo using Xenopus as a model system. It was at this point she began to become interested in how the timing of neuronal differentiation is controlled. [9] In 1997, Nancy was awarded a Wellcome Trust career developmental award and moved back to the UK to set up her own lab at the Gurdon Institute at the University of Cambridge to pursue this question. In Cambridge, Nancy shared lab space with Sir John Gurdon, who won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2012 for his seminal work on Xenopus embryos that has underpinned our understanding of nuclear reprogramming. Her own work, and that of her lab members, focused on understanding how the cell cycle, cell polarity and location controls the balance of neuronal progenitor cell maintenance and differentiation in the developing vertebrate nervous system.

In 2006, she moved her lab to the University of Manchester, where she became research group leader of the developmental biology group [3] in the Faculty of Life Sciences. In Manchester she has continued to investigate how the timing of neurogenesis is regulated during vertebrate development. Using computational modeling and experimental biology her group has discovered that oscillations of the microRNA miR-9 targets an important regulator of neuronal differentiation, HES1, allowing for precisely timed waves of neurogenesis. [10] [11] From January 2011 - January 2014, Nancy was tissue systems section head, representing developmental biology and the Wellcome Trust Centre for Cell-Matrix Research, approximately 40 research groups in the Faculty of Life Sciences. She is also an active member of the university's Women in Science group.

Awards and honours

Related Research Articles

Homeobox DNA pattern affecting anatomy development

A homeobox is a DNA sequence, around 180 base pairs long, found within genes that are involved in the regulation of patterns of anatomical development (morphogenesis) in animals, fungi, plants, and numerous single cell eukaryotes. Homeobox genes encode homeodomain protein products that are transcription factors sharing a characteristic protein fold structure that binds DNA to regulate expression of target genes. Homeodomain proteins regulate gene expression and cell differentiation during early embryonic development, thus mutations in homeobox genes can cause developmental disorders.

John Gurdon English developmental biologist (born 1933)

Sir John Bertrand Gurdon is a British developmental biologist. He is best known for his pioneering research in nuclear transplantation and cloning. He was awarded the Lasker Award in 2009. In 2012, he and Shinya Yamanaka were awarded the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for the discovery that mature cells can be converted to stem cells.

The ParaHox gene cluster is an array of homeobox genes from the Gsx, Xlox (Pdx) and Cdx gene families.

Hox genes, a subset of homeobox genes, are a group of related genes that specify regions of the body plan of an embryo along the head-tail axis of animals. Hox proteins encode and specify the characteristics of 'position', ensuring that the correct structures form in the correct places of the body. For example, Hox genes in insects specify which appendages form on a segment, and Hox genes in vertebrates specify the types and shape of vertebrae that will form. In segmented animals, Hox proteins thus confer segmental or positional identity, but do not form the actual segments themselves.

HOXA5

Homeobox protein Hox-A5 is a protein that in humans is encoded by the HOXA5 gene.

HOXA11

Homeobox protein Hox-A11 is a protein that in humans is encoded by the HOXA11 gene.

HOXB4

Homeobox protein Hox-B4 is a protein that in humans is encoded by the HOXB4 gene.

HOXA7

Homeobox protein Hox-A7 is a protein that in humans is encoded by the HOXA7 gene.

HOXA3

Homeobox protein Hox-A3 is a protein that in humans is encoded by the HOXA3 gene.

HOXD1

Homeobox protein Hox-D1 is a protein that in humans is encoded by the HOXD1 gene.

Cheryll Anne Tickle is a distinguished British scientist, known for her work in developmental biology and specifically for her research into the process by which vertebrate limbs develop ab ovo. She is an Emeritus Professor at the University of Bath.

HOXA2

Homeobox protein Hox-A2 is a protein that in humans is encoded by the HOXA2 gene.

Edward M. De Robertis

Edward Michael De Robertis is an American embryologist and Professor at University of California, Los Angeles, whose work has contributed to the discovery of conserved molecular mechanisms of embryonic inductions that cause tissue differentiations during animal development.

P19 cell

P19 cells is an embryonic carcinoma cell line derived from an embryo-derived teratocarcinoma in mice. The cell line is pluripotent and can differentiate into cell types of all three germ layers. Also, it is the most characterized embryonic carcinoma (EC) cell line that can be induced into cardiac muscle cells and neuronal cells by different specific treatments. Indeed, exposing aggregated P19 cells to dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) induces differentiation into cardiac and skeletal muscle. Also, exposing P19 cells to retinoic acid (RA) can differentiate them into neuronal cells.

Rosa Beddington English developmental biologist

Rosa Susan Penelope Beddington FRS was a British biologist whose career had a major impact on developmental biology.

Retinal homeobox protein Rx

Retinal homeobox protein Rx also known as retina and anterior neural fold homeobox is a protein that in humans is encoded by the RAX gene. The RAX gene is located on chromosome 18 in humans, mice, and rats.

Clifford Tabin

Clifford James Tabin is chairman of the Department of Genetics at Harvard Medical School.

Hox genes in amphibians and reptiles

Hox genes play a massive role in some amphibians and reptiles in their ability to regenerate lost limbs, especially HoxA and HoxD genes.

Kate Gillian Storey is a developmental biologist and head of Division of Cell & Developmental Biology at University of Dundee.

Robb Krumlauf is an American developmental biologist. He is best known for researching the Hox family of transcription factors. He is most interested in understanding the role of the Hox genes in the hindbrain and their role in areas of animal development, such as craniofacial development. Krumlauf worked with a variety of renowned scientists in the field of developmental biology throughout his time researching Hox genes.

References

  1. ↑ Nancy Papalopulu publications from Europe PubMed Central
  2. ↑ Nancy Papalopulu publications indexed by the Scopus bibliographic database. (subscription required)
  3. 1 2 papalopululab.wordpress.com OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg
  4. ↑ Graham, Anthony; Papalopulu, Nancy; Krumlauf, Robb (1989). "The murine and Drosophila homeobox gene complexes have common features of organization and expression". Cell. 57 (3): 367–378. doi:10.1016/0092-8674(89)90912-4. ISSN   0092-8674. PMID   2566383. S2CID   22259601.
  5. ↑ Giles, Chrissie, ed. (2013). "A brief history of timing" (PDF). Wellcome News (73). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2020-11-16.
  6. ↑ Papalopulu, Nancy; Hunt P; Wilkinson D; Graham A; Krumlauf R. (1990). "Hox-2 homeobox genes and retinoic acid: potential roles in patterning the vertebrate nervous system". Advances in Neural Regeneration Research: 291–307.
  7. ↑ Papalopoulou, Athanasia (1991). Analysis of vertebrate homeobox containing genes. ucl.ac.uk (PhD thesis). University of London. OCLC   1170168705. EThOS   uk.bl.ethos.815786. Open Access logo PLoS transparent.svg
  8. ↑ Papalopulu N, Kintner C (1993). "Xenopus Distal-less related homeobox genes are expressed in the developing forebrain and are induced by planar signals". Development. 117 (3): 961–75. PMID   8100768.
  9. ↑ Papalopulu, Nancy; Kintner C. (1996). "A posteriorising factor, retinoic acid, reveals that anteroposterior patterning controls the timing of neuronal differentiation in Xenopus neuroectoderm". Development. 122 (11): 3409–3418. PMID   8951057.
  10. ↑ Bonev, Boyan; Stanley P; Papalopulu N. (2012). "miR-9 modulates Hes1 ultradian oscillations by forming a double negative-feedback loop". Cell Reports. 2 (1): 10–18. doi:10.1016/j.celrep.2012.05.017. PMC   4103481 . PMID   22840391.
  11. ↑ Goodfellow, Marc; Phillips N; Manning C; Galla T; Papalopulu N. (2014). "microRNA input into a neural ultradian oscillator provides a mechanism for the timing of differentiation and the emergence of alternative cells states". Nature Communications. 5: 3399. doi:10.1038/ncomms4399. PMC   3959193 . PMID   24595054.
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