Genetics & Developmental Biology Stories
Genetics & Developmental Biology
Insights from Eggs
A Carnegie Evening Lecture Dr. Allan Spradling, Director Department of Embryology, Carnegie Institution for Science Eggs are uniquely important animal cells. Only eggs can support the development of...
Explore this Story
Genetics & Developmental Biology
Yixian Zheng written up in The Journal of Cell Biology
Mitotic proteins take on editorial duties in this writeup of new work from Yixian Zheng's lab in The Journal of Cell Biology....
Explore this Story
Genetics & Developmental Biology
Biochemistry detective work: algae at night
Cells often face low-oxygen conditions at night. When this happens, some organisms such as the single-cell alga Chlamydomonas are able to generate cellular energy from the breakdown of sugars...
Explore this Story
Genetics & Developmental Biology
Steroid links fat accumulation with egg development
Nutrition and metabolism are closely linked with reproductive health. Several reproductive disorders have been linked to malnutrition, diabetes, and obesity. Furthermore, fasting in numerous species...
Explore this Story
Genetics & Developmental Biology
Steroid links fat accumulation with egg development
Baltimore, MD— Nutrition and metabolism are closely linked with reproductive health. Several reproductive disorders including polycystic ovary syndrome, amenorrhea, and ovarian cancer have been...
Explore this Story
Genetics & Developmental Biology
Carnegie’s Zhao Zhang Receives 2015 Larry Sandler Memorial Award
Baltimore, MD—The newest member of the staff at the Carnegie Department of Embryology, Junior Investigator Zhao Zhang, received the prestigious Larry Sandler Memorial Award at the 56th Annual...
Explore this Story
Genetics & Developmental Biology
Biology at the Extremes: How Studies of the Extraordinary Lead to Discoveries About the Ordinary
February 11, 2015 Dr. Douglas Koshland, University of California Berkeley, Department of Molecular & Cell Biology Remarkable organisms exemplify extremes in the spectrum of life, like transparent...
Explore this Story
Genetics & Developmental Biology
Baby cells learn to communicate using the lsd1 gene
We would not expect a baby to join a team or participate in social situations that require sophisticated communication. Yet, most developmental biologists have assumed that young cells, only recently...
Explore this Story

Pages

Explore Carnegie Projects
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...
Explore this Project
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...
Explore this Project
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...
Explore this Project
Meet Carnegie Scientists
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...
Meet this Scientist
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,...
Meet this Scientist
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...
Meet this Scientist
You May Also Like...
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...
Explore this Story
What genes cause morbid obestity?
The hypothalamus is an essential brain center that maintains multiple physiological homeostatic processes by modulating pituitary hormone secretions. Two centers (nuclei) of the hypothalamus, the...
Explore this Story
Autism linked to egg cells’ difficulty creating large proteins
New work from Carnegie’s Ethan Greenblatt and Allan Spradling reveals that the genetic factors underlying fragile X syndrome, and potentially other autism-related disorders, stem from defects...
Explore this Story

Explore Carnegie Science

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.”
Read Full Story
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

Read Full Story
Meredith Wilson Receives Thirteenth Postdoctoral Innovation and Excellence Award
June 17, 2019

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 prizes are given to postdocs for their exceptionally creative approaches to science, strong mentoring, and contributing to the sense of campus community. The nominations are made by the departments and are chosen by the Office of the President. The recipients receive a cash prize and are celebrated at an event at their departments.  

Wilson came to Carnegie in 2014 from the University of Pennsylvania with a background in cell biology investigating how motor proteins position

Read Full Story
Illustration of a thymus in a human chest courtesy of Navid Marvi.
Inflammation-driven deterioration of structural proteins contributes to aging
May 29, 2019

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 research from Carnegie’s Sibiao Yue, Xiaobin Zheng, and Yixian Zheng published in Aging Cell.

Each of our cells is undergirded by a protein-based cellular skeleton. And each of our tissues is likewise supported by a protein matrix holding the cells that comprise it together. These protein scaffolds or structures are necessary for organs and tissues to be constructed during development.

“Since organ building and maintenance require this protein-based structural support

Read Full Story

More Press ReleasesMore Carnegie News

No content in this section.

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

Read Full Story
Visualizing Lipid Metabolism and Signaling

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.

Read Full Story
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

Read Full Story
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

Read Full Story

More Projects

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 30,000 human genes, 98% of DNA sequences are comprised of repetitive and regulatory sequences within and between genes. Measuring the specific set of DNA sequences that are transcribed into RNA helps reveal what and how our tissues are doing by showing which genes are active.

Modern sequencing platforms, such as the Illumina HiSeq 2000, generate only short, ordered sequences, usually 100

Meet this Scientist
Zhao Zhang

Junior investigator Zhao Zhang joined Carnegie in November 2014. He studies how elements with the ability to “jump” around the genome, called transposons, are controlled in egg, sperm, and other somatic tissues in order to understand how transposons contribute to genomic instability and to mutations that lead to inherited disease and cancer. He particularly focuses on transposon control and its consequences in gonads compared to other tissues and has discovered novel connections to how gene transcripts are processed in the nucleus.To accomplish this work, Zhang frequently develops new tools and techniques, a characteristic of many outstanding Carnegie researchers.

Meet this Scientist
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

Meet this Scientist
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

Meet this Scientist

More Scientists