Victoria Foe | |
---|---|
Born | 1945 (age 77–78) |
Academic background | |
Education | University of Texas at Austin |
Alma mater | University of Washington |
Thesis | Activation of transcriptional units during the embryogenesis of Oncopeltus fasciatus (1975) |
Academic work | |
Discipline | Biology |
Sub-discipline | Developmental biology |
Institutions | University of Washington Center for Cell Dynamics |
Main interests | Drosophila |
Victoria Elizabeth Foe (born 1945) is an American developmental biologist,and Research Professor at the University of Washington's Center for Cell Dynamics. [1] She is known for her work on the development of embryos.
As a child,Foe moved around a lot,living in the United States,Mexico,and England. [2] Foe has a B.S. from the University of Texas at Austin (1966). [3] She then earned a Ph.D. from University of Texas at Austin,where she started working with Hugh Forrest [4] and then finished at the University of Washington,where she studied with Charles Laird. [5] Her postdoctoral work was with Bruce Alberts at the University of California in San Francisco. [4] [6]
Foe joined the zoology department at the University of Washington in 1991. [4] Foe is a founding member of the Center of Cell Dynamics at Friday Harbor Laboratories,within the University of Washington. [7] She has not taught or gone down the traditional path of mentoring young scientists,not wanting to get caught up in administrative duties as a professor. Nor has she let technicians or students work for her in research. [2] As of 2021,Foe is professor emeritus at the University of Washington. [4]
Foe works with frogs,mosquitoes,fruit flies,and fish to examine the growth and patterning of embryos. She describes her work as largely observational,but utilizes recent scientific techniques to explore her observations of the natural world. [8] Her work on Drosophila was supported by an independent supporting grant,by the National Institutes of Health. [2] Foe is best known for her research defining how groups of cells in embryos divide at different rates and thereby develop into different body parts. [9] She has also worked on the formation of furrows during development of cells,through both visual observations [10] and modelling research. [11]
In 1990, Foe was named a Guggenheim fellow. [12] In 1993, at the age of 34, Foe won a McArthur Genius Grant for her work in cell and developmental biology. [3]
Foe is an activist and scientist. She was involved in the women's movement, the anti-Vietnam War movement, and the anti-Persian Gulf War movement. [2] As a student at the University of Texas in 1968, she worked to connect students with doctors willing to prescribe contraceptives to students [13] and to perform abortions. [14] She took a break from her schooling at the University of Texas at Austin to take a position as political aide. While acting as a political aid, she helped overturn the anti-abortion legislation in the state of Texas. [2]
She was married Michael Dennis, a neurophysiologist. They later divorced. [2]
In cell biology a centriole is a cylindrical organelle composed mainly of a protein called tubulin. Centrioles are found in most eukaryotic cells, but are not present in conifers (Pinophyta), flowering plants (angiosperms) and most fungi, and are only present in the male gametes of charophytes, bryophytes, seedless vascular plants, cycads, and Ginkgo. A bound pair of centrioles, surrounded by a highly ordered mass of dense material, called the pericentriolar material (PCM), makes up a structure called a centrosome.
In cell biology, the spindle apparatus is the cytoskeletal structure of eukaryotic cells that forms during cell division to separate sister chromatids between daughter cells. It is referred to as the mitotic spindle during mitosis, a process that produces genetically identical daughter cells, or the meiotic spindle during meiosis, a process that produces gametes with half the number of chromosomes of the parent cell.
An asymmetric cell division produces two daughter cells with different cellular fates. This is in contrast to symmetric cell divisions which give rise to daughter cells of equivalent fates. Notably, stem cells divide asymmetrically to give rise to two distinct daughter cells: one copy of the original stem cell as well as a second daughter programmed to differentiate into a non-stem cell fate.
In cell biology, microtubule nucleation is the event that initiates de novo formation of microtubules (MTs). These filaments of the cytoskeleton typically form through polymerization of α- and β-tubulin dimers, the basic building blocks of the microtubule, which initially interact to nucleate a seed from which the filament elongates.
Aurora kinase B is a protein that functions in the attachment of the mitotic spindle to the centromere.
David Moore Glover is a British geneticist and Research Professor of Biology and Biological Engineering at the California Institute of Technology. He served as Balfour Professor of Genetics at the University of Cambridge, a Wellcome Trust investigator in the Department of Genetics at the University of Cambridge, and Fellow of Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge. He serves as the first editor-in-chief of the open-access journal Open Biology published by the Royal Society.
Dynactin is a 23 subunit protein complex that acts as a co-factor for the microtubule motor cytoplasmic dynein-1. It is built around a short filament of actin related protein-1 (Arp1).
Nuclear mitotic apparatus protein 1 is a protein that in humans is encoded by the NUMA1 gene.
Large tumor suppressor kinase 1 (LATS1) is an enzyme that in humans is encoded by the LATS1 gene.
Anillin is a conserved protein implicated in cytoskeletal dynamics during cellularization and cytokinesis. The ANLN gene in humans and the scraps gene in Drosophila encode Anillin. In 1989, anillin was first isolated in embryos of Drosophila melanogaster. It was identified as an F-actin binding protein. Six years later, the anillin gene was cloned from cDNA originating from a Drosophila ovary. Staining with anti-anillin antibody showed the anillin localizes to the nucleus during interphase and to the contractile ring during cytokinesis. These observations agree with further research that found anillin in high concentrations near the cleavage furrow coinciding with RhoA, a key regulator of contractile ring formation.
Centromere/kinetochore protein zw10 homolog is a protein that in humans is encoded by the ZW10 gene. This gene encodes a protein that is one of many involved in mechanisms to ensure proper chromosome segregation during cell division. The encoded protein binds to centromeres during the prophase, metaphase, and early anaphase cell division stages and to kinetochore microtubules during metaphase.
Hesperadin is an aurora kinase inhibitor.
Conly Leroy Rieder is a cancer researcher in the field of mitotic cellular division. The bulk of his research between 1980 and 2011 was funded through NIH grants and conducted at the Wadsworth Center in the New York State Department of Health in Albany, New York. He has published on the subjects of chromosome motility, spindle assembly, and mitotic checkpoints. His research has contributed to the growing understanding of the process of cell division and the pathology of cancer.
Kinesin-like protein KIF11 is a molecular motor protein that is essential in mitosis. In humans it is coded for by the gene KIF11. Kinesin-like protein KIF11 is a member of the kinesin superfamily, which are nanomotors that move along microtubule tracks in the cell. Named from studies in the early days of discovery, it is also known as Kinesin-5, or as BimC, Eg5 or N-2, based on the founding members of this kinesin family.
Septate junctions are intercellular junctions found in invertebrate epithelial cells, appearing as ladder-like structures under electron microscopy. They are thought to provide structural strength and a barrier to solute diffusion through the intercellular space. They are considered somewhat analogous to the (vertebrate) tight junctions; however, tight and septate junctions are different in many ways. Known insect homologues of tight junction components are components of conserved signalling pathways that localize to either adherens junctions, the subapical complex, or the marginal zone. Recent studies show that septate junctions are also identified in the myelinated nerve fibers of the vertebrates.
Ruth Lehmann is a developmental and cell biologist. She is the Director of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research. She previously was affiliated with the New York University School of Medicine, where she was the Director of the Skirball Institute of Biomolecular Medicine, the Laura and Isaac Perlmutter Professor of Cell Biology, and the Chair of the Department of Cell Biology. Her research focuses on germ cells and embryogenesis.
Samara Reck-Peterson is an American cell biologist and biophysicist. She is a Professor of Cellular and Molecular Medicine and Cell and Developmental Biology at the University of California, San Diego and an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. She is known for her contributions to our understanding of how dynein, an exceptionally large motor protein that moves many intracellular cargos, works and is regulated. She developed one of the first systems to produce recombinant dynein and discovered that, unlike other cytoskeletal motors, dynein can take a wide variety of step sizes, forward and back and even sideways. She lives in San Diego, California.
Inke Näthke is a German-British cell biologist. She is Professor of Epithelial Biology at the Department of Cell & Developmental Biology, Interim Dean and Associate Dean for Professional Culture at the School of Life Sciences at the University of Dundee in Scotland. She is known for her work on the role of the adenomatous polyposis coli (APC) protein in colorectal cancer.
Anne Ephrussi is a French developmental and molecular biologist. Her research is focused on the study of post-transcriptional regulations such as mRNA localization and translation control in molecular biology as well as the establishment of polarity axes in cell and developmental biology. She is head of the Developmental Biology Unit and director of the EMBL International Centre for Advanced Training (EICAT) program at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL).
Renata Homem de Gouveia Xavier de Basto is a researcher in cell and developmental biology. She is currently a team leader at the Institut Curie in Paris. She is also the deputy director of the CNRS research Unit UMR144 'Cell biology and cancer' at the Institut Curie which, comprises 14 research teams.