Congratulations to Dr. Helen McNeill!
McNeill, the Larry J. Shapiro and Carol-Ann Uetake-Shapiro Professor in the Department of Developmental Biology at WashU Medicine, is recognized for outstanding contributions to the field of developmental genetics, particularly tissue growth and alignment in the earliest stages of embryonic and organ development.
As multicellular organisms develop after the union of egg and sperm, cells divide and organize into tissues and organs, behaving in a coordinated fashion to perform the various functions necessary to sustain complex life. Developmental biologists have been studying these intricacies for decades, but several key questions remain.
McNeill’s research has solved several longstanding mysteries in developmental biology, mostly regarding how tissues, organs and embryos begin to form and function in the earliest stages of development. Her particular focus has been molecules called giant cadherins, which dictate how cells adhere to one another to form tissues and organs, and how they function in the Hippo pathway, a molecular signaling pathway that regulates cell proliferation, death and renewal.