Genetics & Developmental Biology Stories
Xenia in Carnegie's coral facility, courtesy Carnegie Embryology
Knock knock. Who’s there? How coral let symbiotic algae in.
Baltimore, MD— New work from a team of Carnegie cell, genomic, and developmental biologists solves a longstanding marine science mystery that could aid coral conservation. The researchers...
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Yixian Zheng
Carnegie’s Zheng wins Moore Foundation support for advancing the frontier of symbiosis research
Baltimore, MD— Carnegie’s Director of Embryology Yixian Zheng is one of 15 scientists awarded a grant from the...
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Illustration courtesy of Navid Marvi and Andres Aranda-Diaz.
Microbiome species interactions reveal how bacteria collaborate to cheat death
Baltimore, MD—Antibiotics can make easy work of infections. But how do they affect the complex ecosystems of friendly bacteria that make up our microbiome? “When a doctor prescribes...
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Bellymount allows researchers to peer into the live tissue of the fruit fly gut.
Eavesdropping on “conversations” between gut stem cells and gut bacteria
Baltimore, MD— They say a picture is worth 1,000 words. But what about a real-time window into the complexity of the gastrointestinal system?  A new research tool allowed biologists to...
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Fetal Oocyte Attrition prevention, courtesy Marla Tharp and Navid Marvi.
Jumping genes threaten egg cell quality; understanding their activity has implications for fertility and health of future generations.
Baltimore, MD— A woman’s supply of eggs is finite, so it is crucial that the quality of their genetic material is ensured. New work from Carnegie’s Marla Tharp, Safia Malki, and...
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Patellar tendon 30 days after an injury courtesy of Tyler Harvey.
Tendon stem cells could revolutionize injury recovery
Baltimore, MD—The buildup of scar tissue makes recovery from torn rotator cuffs, jumper’s knee, and other tendon injuries a painful, challenging process, often leading to secondary tendon...
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Kamena Kostova, courtesy Navid Marvi, Carnegie Institution for Science
Carnegie’s Kamena Kostova recognized by NIH for early career excellence
Baltimore, MD— Carnegie biologist Kamena Kostova has been selected for the...
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GDNF repairs aged muscle stem cells courtesy of Liangji Li.
Possible therapeutic target for slow healing of aged muscles discovered
Washington, DC— An age-related decline in recovery from muscle injury can be traced to a protein that suppresses the special ability of muscle stem cells to build new muscles, according to work...
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Mechanisms of cell division, homeostasis, aging, and cell fate
The Zheng lab studies cell division including the study of stem cells, genome organization, and lineage specification. They study the mechanism of genome organization in development, homeostasis—metabolic balance-- and aging; and the influence of cell morphogenesis, or cell shape and...
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Understanding the musculoskeletal and hypothalamic systems
The Fan laboratory studies the molecular mechanisms that govern mammalian development, using the mouse as a model. They use a combination of biochemical, molecular and genetic approaches to identify and characterize signaling molecules and pathways that control the development and maintenance of...
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Small RNAs in egg and sperm cell development
Approximately half of the gene sequences of human and mouse genomes comes from so-called mobile elements—genes that jump around the genome. Much of this DNA is no longer capable of moving, but is likely “auditioning”  perhaps as a regulator of gene function or in homologous...
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Meet Carnegie Scientists
Chen-Ming Fan
The mouse is a traditional model organism for understanding physiological processes in humans. Chen-Ming Fan uses the mouse to study the underlying mechanisms involved in human development and genetic diseases. He concentrates on identifying and understanding the signals that direct the...
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Alex Bortvin
Integrity of hereditary material—the genome —is critical for species survival. Genomes need protection from agents that can cause mutations affecting DNA coding, regulatory functions, and duplication during cell division. DNA sequences called transposons, or jumping genes (discovered by...
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Yixian Zheng - Director
Yixian Zheng is Director of the Department of Embryology. Her lab has a long-standing interest in cell division. In recent years, their findings have broadened their research using animal models, to include the study of stem cells, genome organization, and lineage specification—how stem cells...
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Decoding cell division’s mysterious spindle matrix
Every high school biology class learns about the process of mitosis, the series of steps through which a cell divides itself into two daughter cells, each with the same genetic material. Mitosis...
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Carnegie’s BioEYES Honored Twofold
Baltimore, MD—Carnegie’s educational outreach program, BioEYES, will be the recipient of the 2012 Viktor Hamburger Outstanding Educator Prize from the Society for Developmental Biology. BioEYES...
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A cause of age-related inflammation found
Baltimore, MD—As animals age, their immune systems gradually deteriorate, a process called immunosenescence. It is associated with systemic inflammation and chronic inflammatory disorders, as well as...
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Explore Carnegie Science

Xenia in Carnegie's coral facility, courtesy Carnegie Embryology
Knock knock. Who’s there? How coral let symbiotic algae in.
June 17, 2020

Baltimore, MD— New work from a team of Carnegie cell, genomic, and developmental biologists solves a longstanding marine science mystery that could aid coral conservation. The researchers identified the type of cell that enables a soft coral to recognize and take up the photosynthetic algae with which it maintains a symbiotic relationship, as well as the genes responsible for this transaction.

Their breakthrough research is published in Nature.

Corals are marine invertebrates that build large exoskeletons from which reefs are constructed. But this architecture is only possible because of a mutually beneficial relationship between the coral and various species of

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Yixian Zheng
Carnegie’s Zheng wins Moore Foundation support for advancing the frontier of symbiosis research
March 11, 2020

Baltimore, MD— Carnegie’s Director of Embryology Yixian Zheng is one of 15 scientists awarded a grant from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation to support research on symbiosis in aquatic systems.

For the past two years, Zheng and her colleagues have been working to elucidate the molecular mechanisms of endosymbiosis in the relationships between coral and jellyfish and the photosynthetic algal species that they host. She has been building on Carnegie’s longstanding tradition of model organism development to begin revealing the genetics underlying the uptake and sustenance of symbiotic dinoflagellates by the soft coral species Xenia.

“I have always

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Illustration courtesy of Navid Marvi and Andres Aranda-Diaz.
Microbiome species interactions reveal how bacteria collaborate to cheat death
March 5, 2020

Baltimore, MD—Antibiotics can make easy work of infections. But how do they affect the complex ecosystems of friendly bacteria that make up our microbiome?

“When a doctor prescribes antibiotics, it sets up a multi-faceted experiment in your gastrointestinal system,” explains Carnegie’s Will Ludington “What can it teach us about the molecular principles of species interactions in nature?”

New work led by Ludington and Stanford University’s K.C. Huang set out to answer this challenging question and discovered a new form of antibiotic tolerance. Their findings, which have important health implications, are published by eLife.

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Bellymount allows researchers to peer into the live tissue of the fruit fly gut.
Eavesdropping on “conversations” between gut stem cells and gut bacteria
March 2, 2020

Baltimore, MD— They say a picture is worth 1,000 words. But what about a real-time window into the complexity of the gastrointestinal system? 

A new research tool allowed biologists to watch in real time the cell renewal process that keeps gut tissue healthy, as well as the interactions between bacterial species that make up the microbiome. Their work, led by Lucy O’Brien and KC Huang of Stanford University and Carnegie’s Will Ludington, was recently published by PLOS Biology.

The system, dubbed Bellymount, allowed researchers to peer into the live tissue of the fruit fly gut and better understand the many complex, overlapping processes occurring

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Understanding the musculoskeletal and hypothalamic systems

The Fan laboratory studies the molecular mechanisms that govern mammalian development, using the mouse as a model. They use a combination of biochemical, molecular and genetic approaches to identify and characterize signaling molecules and pathways that control the development and maintenance of the musculoskeletal and hypothalamic systems.

The musculoskeletal system provides the mechanical support for our posture and movement. How it arises during embryogenesis pertains to the basic problem of embryonic induction. How the components of this system are repaired after injury and maintained throughout life is of biological and clinical significance. They study how this system is

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Left and right side differences of the developing brain

The Marnie Halpern laboratory studies how left-right differences arise in the developing brain and discovers the genes that control this asymmetry. Using the tiny zebrafish, Danio rerio, they explores how regional specializations occur within the neural tube, the embryonic tissue that develops into the brain and spinal cord.

The zebrafish is ideal for these studies because its basic body plan is set within 24 hours of fertilization. By day five, young larvae are able to feed and swim, and within three months they are ready to reproduce. They are also prolific breeders. Most importantly the embryos are transparent, allowing scientists to watch the nervous system develop and to

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The biology of reproduction studying ovarian stem cells of the fruitfly

The Spradling laboratory studies the biology of reproduction. By unknown means eggs reset the normally irreversible processes of differentiation and aging. The fruit fly Drosophila provides a favorable multicellular system for molecular genetic studies. The lab focuses on several aspects of egg development, called oogenesis, which promises to provide insight into the rejuvenation of the nucleus and surrounding cytoplasm. By studying ovarian stem cells, they are learning how cells maintain an undifferentiated state and how cell production is regulated by microenvironments known as niches. They are  also re-investigating the role of steroid and prostaglandin hormones in controlling

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Small RNAs in egg and sperm cell development

Approximately half of the gene sequences of human and mouse genomes comes from so-called mobile elements—genes that jump around the genome. Much of this DNA is no longer capable of moving, but is likely “auditioning”  perhaps as a regulator of gene function or in homologous recombination, which is a type of genetic recombination where the basic structural units of DNA,  nucleotide sequences, are exchanged between two DNA molecules to  repair  breaks in the DNA  strands. Modern mammalian genomes also contain numerous intact movable elements, such as retrotransposon LINE-1, that use RNA intermediates to spread about the genome. 

Given

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Kamena Kostova

Staff Associate Kamena Kostova joined the Department of Embryology in November 2018. She studies ribosomes, the factory-like structures inside cells that produce proteins. Scientists have known about ribosome structure, function, and biogenesis for some time. But, a major unanswered question is how cells monitor the integrity of the ribosome itself. Problems with ribosomes have been associated with diseases including neurodegeneration and cancer. The Kostova lab investigates the fundamental question of how cells respond when their ribosomes break down using mass spectrometry, functional genomics methods, and CRISPR genome editing.

Kostova received a B.S. in Biology from the

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Donald Brown - Emeritus

The Donald Brown laboratory uses  amphibian metamorphosis to study complex developmental programs such as the development of vertebrate organs. The thyroid gland secretes thyroxine (TH), a hormone essential for the growth and development of all vertebrates including humans. To understand TH, director emeritus Donald Brown studies one of the most dramatic roles of the hormone, the control of amphibian metamorphosis—the process by which a tadpole turns into a frog. He studies the frog Xenopus laevis from South Africa.

 Events as different as the formation of limbs, the remodeling of organs, and the resorption of tadpole tissues such as the tail are all directed by TH

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Steven Farber
Steven Farber

In mammals, most lipids, such as fatty acids and cholesterol, are absorbed into the body via the small intestine. The complexity of the cells and fluids that inhabit this organ make it very difficult to study in a laboratory setting. The goal of the Farber lab is to better understand the cell and molecular biology of lipids within digestive organs by exploiting the many unique attributes of the clear zebrafish larva  to visualize lipid uptake and processing in real time.  Given their utmost necessity for proper cellular function, it is not surprising that defects in lipid metabolism underlie a number of human diseases, including obesity, diabetes, and atherosclerosis.

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Allan Spradling

Allan Spradling is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator and director of the Department of Embryology. His laboratory studies the biology of reproduction particularly egg cells, which are able to reset the normally irreversible processes of differentiation and aging that govern all somatic cells—those that turn into non-reproductive tissues. Spradling uses the fruit fly Drosophila because the genes and processes studied are likely to be similar to those in other organisms including humans. In the 1980s he and his colleague, Gerald Rubin, showed how jumping genes could be used to identify and manipulate fruit fly genes. Their innovative technique helped establish Drosophila

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