Judith Kimble

Professor Judith Kimble
Born Judith Elisabeth Kimble
Alma mater University of California, Berkeley
University of Colorado Boulder
Scientific career
Fields Molecular regulation of animal development in Caenorhabditis elegans[1][2][3][4]
Institutions University of Wisconsin–Madison
Laboratory of Molecular Biology
Thesis The Post-embryonic cell lineages of the hermaphrodite and male gonads in Caenorhabditis elegans (1978)
Doctoral students Julie Ahringer[5][6][7]
Website www.biochem.wisc.edu/faculty/kimble

Professor Judith Kimble is a Henry Vilas Professor of Biochemistry, Molecular Biology, Medical Genetics and Cell and Regenerative Biology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and Investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI). Professor Kimble’s research focuses on the molecular regulation of animal development.[1]

Education and training

Judith Kimble received her Bachelor's degree in biomedical sciences from the University of California, Berkeley in 1971. She originally intended to become a physician.[8] However, whilst in her last year as an undergraduate, she took a temporary job at the University of Copenhagen Medical School, she taught medical students about the structure and function of human organs, which, combined with her undergraduate studies in human embryology, sparked an interest in the "basic problems in animal development."

She began her graduate studies in 1974 at the University of Colorado at Boulder. There, she worked with molecular biologist David Hirsh who was studying the model organism Caenorhabditis elegans. Kimble then moved to the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, where she spent four years as a postdoctoral fellow working with Sir John Sulston on the control of organogenesis. During the course of her work, Kimble found a special somatic cell at the tip of the gonad which tells nearby germ cells - reproductive cells - how to divide. When she destroyed the distal tip cell, germ cells stopped dividing. When she moved the somatic cell to a different place, germ cells started dividing in that new location. This was the first time a single cell with such an oversight function had been identified.

Early career

Kimble moved to the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1983 where she took up an assistant professorship position. Discovery of the distal tip cell gave her the means of exploring the control of germline stem cells. She then began to examine the genetic and molecular mechanisms responsible for germline stem cells and the processes by which germ cells develop into sperm or egg cells.

Later work

Kimble's more recent work has focused on sexual dimorphism in order to understand how organs with different shapes, sizes ad tissues can be made from the same starting cells.

Achievements

Professor Kimble has published more than 150 scientific articles[1] and is listed on two US-issued patents. She has trained more than 30 postdoctoral fellows and graduate students, including Tim Schedl, and Julie Ahringer.[9] She is an investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute since 1994 and a member of the National Academy of Sciences. She served on the President’s Committee on the National Medal of Science (2012-2014) and as a chair of the committee in 2015.

References

  1. 1 2 3 Judith Kimble's publications indexed by the Scopus bibliographic database. (subscription required)
  2. ↑ Kimble, J.; Hirsh, D. (1979). "The postembryonic cell lineages of the hermaphrodite and male gonads in Caenorhabditis elegans". Developmental Biology. 70 (2): 396–417. doi:10.1016/0012-1606(79)90035-6. PMID 478167.
  3. ↑ Wickens, M. P.; Gallegos, B.; Puoti, M.; Durkin, A.; Fields, E.; Kimble, S.; Wickens, J. (1997). "A conserved RNA-binding protein that regulates sexual fates in the C. Elegans hermaphrodite germ line". Nature. 390 (6659): 477–484. doi:10.1038/37297. PMID 9393998.
  4. ↑ Morrison, S. J.; Kimble, J. (2006). "Asymmetric and symmetric stem-cell divisions in development and cancer". Nature. 441 (7097): 1068–1074. doi:10.1038/nature04956. PMID 16810241.
  5. ↑ Ahringer, Julie Ann (1991). Posttranscriptional regulation offem-3, a sex-determining gene of Caenorhabditis elegans (PhD thesis). University of Wisconsin–Madison.
  6. ↑ Ahringer, J.; Rosenquist, T. A.; Lawson, D. N.; Kimble, J. (1992). "The Caenorhabditis elegans sex determining gene fem-3 is regulated post-transcriptionally". The EMBO Journal. 11 (6): 2303–2310. PMC 556697. PMID 1376249.
  7. ↑ Ahringer, J.; Kimble, J. (1991). "Control of the sperm–oocyte switch in Caenorhabditis elegans hermaphrodites by the fem-3 3′ untranslated region". Nature. 349 (6307): 346–348. doi:10.1038/349346a0. PMID 1702880.
  8. ↑ "HHMI biographies".
  9. ↑ Wormbase Lineage http://www.wormbase.org/resources/person/WBPerson320#01--10. Missing or empty |title= (help)
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