Genetics & Developmental Biology Stories
Genetics & Developmental Biology
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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Genetics & Developmental Biology
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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Genetics & Developmental Biology
This image captures the bright blue light (chemiluminesc ence) emitted by the NanoLuc protein in LipoGlo zebrafish. It is is provided courtesy of James Thierer.
Glowing cholesterol helps scientists fight heart disease
Baltimore, MD—A newly developed technique that shows artery clogging fat-and-protein complexes in live fish gave investigators from Carnegie, Johns Hopkins University, and the Mayo Clinic a...
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Genetics & Developmental Biology
One analogy for understanding the mathematical structure of the team's work is to think of it as foam being simplified into a single bubble by progressively merging adjacent bubbles.
Can mathematics help us understand the complexity of our microbiome?
Baltimore, MD—How do the communities of microbes living in our gastrointestinal systems affect our health? Carnegie’s Will Ludington was part of a team that helped answer this question....
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Genetics & Developmental Biology
Meredith Wilson Receives Thirteenth Postdoctoral Innovation and Excellence Award
Meredith Wilson, a postdoctoral associate in Steve Farber’s lab at the Department of Embryology, has been awarded Carnegie’s thirteenth Postdoctoral Innovation and Excellence Award. These...
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Genetics & Developmental Biology
Illustration of a thymus in a human chest courtesy of Navid Marvi.
Inflammation-driven deterioration of structural proteins contributes to aging
Washington, DC—Aging-related inflammation can drive the decline of a critical structural protein called lamin-B1, which contributes to diminished immune function in the thymus, according to...
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Genetics & Developmental Biology
Steve Farber photo by Navid Marvi, courtesy of the Carnegie Institution for Science
Steve Farber recognized for science mentorship
Baltimore, MD—This week Carnegie’s Steve Farber will be recognized by New England Biolabs Inc. with its Passion in Science Award in the category of Mentorship and Advocacy. The company,...
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Genetics & Developmental Biology
Michael Diamreyan with Yixian Zheng, Frederick Tan, and Minjie Hu courtesy of Navid Marvi, Carnegie Embryology.
Carnegie undergraduate wins two prestigious research awards
Baltimore, MD—Michael Diamreyan, a Johns Hopkins University undergraduate biophysics student with a Carnegie connection, has been awarded two prestigious research grants to further his...
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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...
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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...
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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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Meet Carnegie Scientists
Frederick Tan
Frederick Tan holds a unique position at Embryology in this era of high-throughput sequencing where determining DNA and RNA sequences has become one of the most powerful technologies in biology. DNA provides the basic code shared by all our cells to program our development. While there are about 30...
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Marnie Halpern
There is a lot of folklore about left-brain, right-brain differences—the right side of the brain is supposed to be the creative side, while the left is the logical half. But it’s much more complicated than that. Marnie Halpern studies how left-right differences arise in the developing...
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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...
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Steven Farber Awarded $3.3-Million NIH Grant To Identify New Pharmaceuticals To Fight Cardiovascular Disease
Carnegie’s Department of Embryology scientist Steven Farber and team have been awarded a 5-year $3.3-million NIH grant to identify novel pharmaceuticals for combating a host of diseases associated...
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Sisterly sacrifice among ovarian germ cells key to egg development
Baltimore, MD—New work from Carnegie’s Allan Spradling and Lei Lei demonstrates that mammalian egg cells gain crucial cellular components at an early stage from their undifferentiated sister cells,...
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After “freezing” in fear, what part of the brain helps make fish swim again?
The brain is the body’s mission control center, sending messages to the other organs about how to respond to various external and internal stimuli. Located in the forebrain, the habenular...
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Explore Carnegie Science

Kamena Kostova, courtesy Navid Marvi, Carnegie Institution for Science
Carnegie’s Kamena Kostova recognized by NIH for early career excellence
October 1, 2019

Baltimore, MD— Carnegie biologist Kamena Kostova has been selected for the Director’s Early Independence Award from the National Institutes of Health, which is designed to provide “exceptional junior scientists” with the opportunity to “skip traditional post-doctoral training and move immediately into independent research positions.”

Kostova is one of 13 recipients of the 2019 Early Independence Award. The recognition is part of a suite of four that comprise the NIH Director’s High-Risk, High-Reward Research Program, which honors “highly innovative biomedical or behavioral research proposed by extraordinarily creative scientists.

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GDNF repairs aged muscle stem cells courtesy of Liangji Li.
Possible therapeutic target for slow healing of aged muscles discovered
September 30, 2019

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 from a team of current and former Carnegie biologists led by Chen-Ming Fan and published in Nature Metabolism.

Skeletal muscles have a tremendous capacity to make new muscles from special muscle stem cells. These “blank” cells are not only good at making muscles but also at generating more of themselves, a process called self-renewal. But their amazing abilities diminish with age, resulting in poorer muscle regeneration from muscle trauma.

The research team—

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This image captures the bright blue light (chemiluminesc ence) emitted by the NanoLuc protein in LipoGlo zebrafish. It is is provided courtesy of James Thierer.
Glowing cholesterol helps scientists fight heart disease
July 31, 2019

Baltimore, MD—A newly developed technique that shows artery clogging fat-and-protein complexes in live fish gave investigators from Carnegie, Johns Hopkins University, and the Mayo Clinic a glimpse of how to study heart disease in action. Their research, which is currently being used to find new drugs to fight cardiovascular disease, is now published in Nature Communications.

Fat molecules, also called lipids, such as cholesterol and triglycerides are shuttled around the circulatory system by a protein called Apolipoprotein-B, or ApoB for short. These complexes of lipid and protein are called lipoproteins but may be more commonly known as “bad cholesterol.”
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One analogy for understanding the mathematical structure of the team's work is to think of it as foam being simplified into a single bubble by progressively merging adjacent bubbles.
Can mathematics help us understand the complexity of our microbiome?
July 2, 2019

Baltimore, MD—How do the communities of microbes living in our gastrointestinal systems affect our health? Carnegie’s Will Ludington was part of a team that helped answer this question.

For nearly a century, evolutionary biologists have probed how genes encode an individual’s chances for success—or fitness—in a specific environment.

In order to reveal a potential evolutionary trajectory biologists measure the interactions between genes to see which combinations are most fit.  An organism that is evolving should take the most fit path. This concept is called a fitness landscape, and various mathematical techniques have been developed 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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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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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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Joseph Gall

The first step in gene expression is the formation of an RNA copy of its DNA. This step, called transcription, takes place in the cell nucleus. Transcription requires an enzyme called RNA polymerase to catalyze the synthesis of the RNA from the DNA template. This, in addition to other processing factors, is needed before messenger RNA (mRNA) can be exported to the cytoplasm, the area surrounding the nucleus.

Although the biochemical details of transcription and RNA processing are known, relatively little is understood about their cellular organization. Joseph G. Gall has been an intellectual leader and has made seminal breakthroughs in our understanding of chromosomes, nuclei and

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William Ludington

The Ludington lab investigates complex ecological dynamics from microbial community interactions using the fruit fly  Drosophila melanogaster. The fruit fly gut carries numerous microbial species, which can be cultured in the lab. The goal is to understand the gut ecology and how it relates to host health, among other questions, by taking advantage of the fast time-scale and ease of studying the fruit fly in controlled experiments. 
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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 musculoskeletal system to develop in the mammalian embryo. Skin, muscle, cartilage, and bone are all derived from a group of progenitor structures called somites. Various growth factors—molecules that stimulate the growth of cells—in the surrounding tissues work in concert to signal each somitic cell to differentiate into a specific tissue type.

The lab has identified various growth

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