Magdalena Zernicka-Goetz

Magdalena Zernicka-Goetz FMedSci[1][2][3] is a Polish-British developmental biologist. She is Professor of Mammalian Development and Stem Cell Biology in the Department of Physiology, Development and Neuroscience and Fellow of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge. She is also Bren Professor of Biology and Biological Engineering at Caltech.[4]

Magdalena Zernicka-Goetz
CitizenshipPolish and British
Alma materPh.D., University of Warsaw
Known forFate decisions in preimplantation embryo; cytoplasmic movements in zygote predict developmental success; in vitro development of implantation stage embryos; synthetic embryos from stem cells
Scientific career
FieldsMolecular Embryology and Stem Cell Biology
InstitutionsUniversity of Warsaw; University of Oxford; University of Cambridge
PatronsAndrzej Tarkowski; Chris Graham, Martin Evans, John Gurdon
Websitehttp://zernickagoetzlab.pdn.cam.ac.uk/

Education

Zernicka-Goetz was born in Warsaw, Poland. She received her Master of Science degree (summa cum laude) in developmental biology (1988) and her PhD degree in the developmental biology of mammals (1993) from the University of Warsaw with one year (1990–91) spent at the University of Oxford.

Career and research

After obtaining her Ph.D., Zernicka-Goetz spent two years as a post-doctoral EMBO fellow with Professor Sir Martin Evans in the Wellcome Trust / Cancer Research UK Institute (now the Gurdon Institute) in Cambridge. In 1997, she started her independent group in the Gurdon Institute where she was a Lister Institute Senior Research Fellow (1997-2002) and subsequently a Wellcome Trust Senior Research Fellow. In 2014, she moved her laboratory to the Department of Physiology, Development and Neuroscience of the University of Cambridge. In 2007, she was awarded a readership and in 2010 a professorship at the University of Cambridge.

Zernicka-Goetz was elected a member of the European Molecular Biology Organisation[5] in 2007, a fellow of the British Academy of Medical Sciences,[6] 2013, and a foreign member of Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2016.

Scientific contributions

Zernicka-Goetz carried out her Ph.D. studies with Andrzej Tarkowski (Warsaw) and Chris Graham (Oxford) and her post-doctoral training with Sir Martin Evans (Cambridge). Upon setting up her independent group in 1997, she studied the mechanisms regulating early mammalian development. To do this, she was first to establish RNA interference in mammalian cells to determine cell fate in the mouse embryos.[7] At that time, she also began to trace the origins and destinies of cells in the preimplantation mouse embryo that let her to discover that cell fate specification begins earlier than expected,[8][9][10][11] an unexpected discovery but subsequently validated by her group and others. She found that this development of cell identity begins with heterogeneity in epigenetic regulation at the 4-cell stage[12] that directs a molecular cascade establishing cell polarity, position and fate.[13][14][15][16]

Her recent development of systems permitting both mouse and human embryogenesis during implantation and early post-implantation stages in vitro allowed her to reveal that mouse and human embryo remodelling at implantation is done autonomously by the embryo. She uncovered the mechanism underlying embryo remodelling between the blastocyst and gastrula stages that has led to a change in the textbook model.[17][18] Her demonstration of the self-organisation of human embryos developing in vitro until day 13/14, gastrulation, has provided an unprecedented opportunity to study human development at previously inaccessible and critical stages.[19] This discovery was hailed as the people's choice for the scientific breakthrough of 2016 by Science magazine.[20][21] The knowledge she gained through her work on how the embryo develops during the blastocyst to gastrula transition, allowed her to mimic these developmental processes with different types of stem cells in vitro. This led her to the pioneering success of constructing embryo-like structures from pluripotent embryonic and multipotent extra-embryonic (trophoblast) stem cells in a 3D scaffold of extra-cellular matrix proteins in vitro.[22] These "synthetic embryos" recapitulate the natural architecture of the embryo and their patterns of gene expression leading to the specification of the germ layers and germ cells. This system allowed her to identify signalling pathways responsible for morphogenesis of stem cells into embryos. Together these models bring outstanding potential for understanding development and for regenerative medicine.

Zernicka-Goetz's group have shown that sperm entry induces actomyosin-driven cytoplasmic flows that are predictive of successful development to birth in the mouse. This provides an opportunity to identify quantitatively and non-invasively the healthiest embryos to transfer to would-be-mothers in IVF.[23]

Stimulated by the finding of placental cells with abnormal chromosome complements (aneuploid cells) in her own pregnancy, she began to study the consequence of aneuploidy upon development in a mouse model. Her lab generated an experimental model to find that aneuploid cells arising during embryogenesis in the mouse embryo become eliminated by apoptosis in embryonic but not extra-embryonic tissues. This gives insight into why mosaic aneuploidy identified by chorionic-villus-sampling can be tolerated in human pregnancies.[24]

The potential impact of Zernicka-Goetz's work is now becoming widely recognised through her public engagement.[25][26]

Her book “The Dance of Life” co-authored with Roger Highfield, describes her scientific and personal journey devoted to understanding the earliest stages of our own life and the critical issue of women in science. "A touching, detailed portrait of a life in science. Beautifully written, it's a reminder that scientists are human and their humanity affects every part of their work.” -Angela Saini. "Few books succeed as well as this in taking a complex area of rapidly advancing science, and turning it into a compelling human story. Rarely will you read such an intimate and personal account of scientific discovery.” - Evan Davis.[27]

Awards and honors
  • The Times 'Science Power List', May 2020[28]
  • International Foundation IVI Award for the Best Basic Research in Reproductive Medicine, 2017[29]
  • Foreign Member of Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences, elected 2016
  • Winner of the People's Vote for Scientific Breakthrough of the year 2016 by Science magazine
  • Fellow of British Academy of Medical Science, elected 2013
  • Anne McLaren Memorial Lecture Award, International Society of Differentiation, 2008
  • Member of European Molecular Biology Organisation, elected 2007
  • Young Investigator Award, EMBO (2001-2004)
  • Wellcome Trust Senior Research Fellowship (2002-2008, 2008-2013, 2013–2018)
  • Lister Institute of Preventative Medicine Senior Research Fellowship (1997-2002)
  • EMBO Long-term Fellowship for post-doctoral studies at the University of Cambridge (1995-1997)
  • Best Ph.D. thesis Award, Polish Ministry of Education, 1994
  • Promising Young Scientist Prize, Foundation for Polish Science, 1993

References
  1. "MZG". zernickagoetzlab.pdn.cam.ac.uk. Retrieved 2017-04-02.
  2. ri256@cam.ac.uk. "Magdalena Zernicka-Goetz — Department of Physiology, Development and Neuroscience". www.pdn.cam.ac.uk. Retrieved 2017-04-02.
  3. "College Fellows and Staff - Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge University". www.sid.cam.ac.uk. Retrieved 2017-04-02.
  4. "Magdalena Zernicka-Goetz | Division of Biology and Biological Engineering". bbe70.divisions.caltech.edu. Retrieved 2020-06-18.
  5. "EMBO Members elected 2007" (PDF).
  6. "Professor Magdalena Zernicka-Goetz | The Academy of Medical Sciences". acmedsci.ac.uk. Retrieved 2017-04-02.
  7. Wianny F, Zernicka-Goetz M (February 2000). "Specific interference with gene function by double-stranded RNA in early mouse development". Nature Cell Biology. 2 (2): 70–5. doi:10.1038/35000016. PMID 10655585.
  8. Piotrowska K, Zernicka-Goetz M (January 2001). "Role for sperm in spatial patterning of the early mouse embryo". Nature. 409 (6819): 517–21. doi:10.1038/35054069. PMID 11206548.
  9. Wang QT, Piotrowska K, Ciemerych MA, Milenkovic L, Scott MP, Davis RW, Zernicka-Goetz M (January 2004). "A genome-wide study of gene activity reveals developmental signaling pathways in the preimplantation mouse embryo". Developmental Cell. 6 (1): 133–44. doi:10.1016/S1534-5807(03)00404-0. PMID 14723853.
  10. Plusa B, Hadjantonakis AK, Gray D, Piotrowska-Nitsche K, Jedrusik A, Papaioannou VE, Glover DM, Zernicka-Goetz M (March 2005). "The first cleavage of the mouse zygote predicts the blastocyst axis". Nature. 434 (7031): 391–5. doi:10.1038/nature03388. PMID 15772664.
  11. Piotrowska-Nitsche K, Perea-Gomez A, Haraguchi S, Zernicka-Goetz M (February 2005). "Four-cell stage mouse blastomeres have different developmental properties". Development. 132 (3): 479–90. doi:10.1242/dev.01602. PMID 15634695.
  12. Torres-Padilla ME, Parfitt DE, Kouzarides T, Zernicka-Goetz M (January 2007). "Histone arginine methylation regulates pluripotency in the early mouse embryo". Nature. 445 (7124): 214–8. doi:10.1038/nature05458. PMC 3353120. PMID 17215844.
  13. Jedrusik A, Bruce AW, Tan MH, Leong DE, Skamagki M, Yao M, Zernicka-Goetz M (August 2010). "Maternally and zygotically provided Cdx2 have novel and critical roles for early development of the mouse embryo". Developmental Biology. 344 (1): 66–78. doi:10.1016/j.ydbio.2010.04.017. PMC 2954319. PMID 20430022.
  14. Morris SA, Teo RT, Li H, Robson P, Glover DM, Zernicka-Goetz M (April 2010). "Origin and formation of the first two distinct cell types of the inner cell mass in the mouse embryo". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 107 (14): 6364–9. doi:10.1073/pnas.0915063107. PMC 2852013. PMID 20308546.
  15. Goolam M, Scialdone A, Graham SJ, Macaulay IC, Jedrusik A, Hupalowska A, Voet T, Marioni JC, Zernicka-Goetz M (March 2016). "Heterogeneity in Oct4 and Sox2 Targets Biases Cell Fate in 4-Cell Mouse Embryos". Cell. 165 (1): 61–74. doi:10.1016/j.cell.2016.01.047. PMC 4819611. PMID 27015307.
  16. White MD, Angiolini JF, Alvarez YD, Kaur G, Zhao ZW, Mocskos E, Bruno L, Bissiere S, Levi V, Plachta N (March 2016). "Long-Lived Binding of Sox2 to DNA Predicts Cell Fate in the Four-Cell Mouse Embryo". Cell. 165 (1): 75–87. doi:10.1016/j.cell.2016.02.032. PMID 27015308.
  17. Morris SA, Grewal S, Barrios F, Patankar SN, Strauss B, Buttery L, Alexander M, Shakesheff KM, Zernicka-Goetz M (February 2012). "Dynamics of anterior-posterior axis formation in the developing mouse embryo". Nature Communications. 3: 673. doi:10.1038/ncomms1671. PMC 3293425. PMID 22334076.
  18. Bedzhov I, Zernicka-Goetz M (February 2014). "Self-organizing properties of mouse pluripotent cells initiate morphogenesis upon implantation". Cell. 156 (5): 1032–44. doi:10.1016/j.cell.2014.01.023. PMC 3991392. PMID 24529478.
  19. Shahbazi MN, Jedrusik A, Vuoristo S, Recher G, Hupalowska A, Bolton V, Fogarty NM, Campbell A, Devito LG, Ilic D, Khalaf Y, Niakan KK, Fishel S, Zernicka-Goetz M (June 2016). "Self-organization of the human embryo in the absence of maternal tissues". Nature Cell Biology. 18 (6): 700–8. doi:10.1038/ncb3347. PMC 5049689. PMID 27144686.
  20. "Cambridge study named as People's Choice for Science magazine's 'Breakthrough of the Year 2016'". University of Cambridge. 2016-12-22. Retrieved 2017-04-02.
  21. "Ripples in spacetime: Science's 2016 Breakthrough of the Year". Science | AAAS. 2016-12-19. Retrieved 2017-04-02.
  22. Harrison SE, Sozen B, Christodoulou N, Kyprianou C, Zernicka-Goetz M (March 2017). "Assembly of embryonic and extra-embryonic stem cells to mimic embryogenesis in vitro" (PDF). Science. 356 (6334): eaal1810. doi:10.1126/science.aal1810. PMID 28254784.
  23. Ajduk A, Ilozue T, Windsor S, Yu Y, Seres KB, Bomphrey RJ, Tom BD, Swann K, Thomas A, Graham C, Zernicka-Goetz M (August 2011). "Rhythmic actomyosin-driven contractions induced by sperm entry predict mammalian embryo viability". Nature Communications. 2: 417. doi:10.1038/ncomms1424. PMC 3265380. PMID 21829179.
  24. Bolton H, Graham SJ, Van der Aa N, Kumar P, Theunis K, Fernandez Gallardo E, Voet T, Zernicka-Goetz M (March 2016). "Mouse model of chromosome mosaicism reveals lineage-specific depletion of aneuploid cells and normal developmental potential". Nature Communications. 7: 11165. doi:10.1038/ncomms11165. PMC 4820631. PMID 27021558.
  25. Stanford (2016-06-08), Magdalena Zernicka-Goetz - Conception and Early Development, retrieved 2017-04-02
  26. Vogel G (October 2016). "Pushing the limit". Science. 354 (6311): 404–407. doi:10.1126/science.354.6311.404. PMID 27789822.
  27. Highfield, Magdalena Zernicka-Goetz,Roger. "The Dance of Life". www.penguin.co.uk. Retrieved 2020-06-18.
  28. Franklin-Wallis, Oliver (23 May 2020). "From pandemics to cancer: the science power list". The Times. ISSN 0140-0460. Retrieved 2020-05-26.
  29. IVI, Fundación. "The Foundation". www.ivifoundation.net. Retrieved 2017-04-02.
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