Magdalena Żernicka-Goetz Explained

Magda Żernicka-Goetz
Birth Name:Magdalena Żernicka-Goetz
Birth Date:30 August 1963
Birth Place:Warsaw, Poland
Citizenship:Polish
British
Workplaces:University of Warsaw
University of Oxford
University of Cambridge
Education:University of Warsaw (MS, PhD)
Awards:EMBO Member (2007)
Fields:Developmental biology

Magdalena Żernicka-Goetz (born 30 August 1963) [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 also serves as Bren Professor of Biology and Biological Engineering at California Institute of Technology (Caltech).[4]

In 2020, she was listed by Prospect as the 10th-greatest thinker for the COVID-19 era, with the magazine writing, “She’s been able to grow human embryos in vitro right up to the current 14-day legal limit.”[5]

Education

Żernicka-Goetz was born in Warsaw, Poland in 1963. 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. She carried out her Ph.D. studies with Andrzej Tarkowski (Warsaw) and Chris Graham (Oxford).

Career and research

After obtaining her Ph.D., Zernicka-Goetz spent two years as a postdoctoral European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) fellow with 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.

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.[6] 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,[7] [8] [9] [10] 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[11] that directs a molecular cascade establishing cell polarity, position and fate.[12] [13] [14] [15]

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.[16] [17] The demonstration of the self-organisation of human embryos developing in vitro until day 13/14, by Zernicka-Goetz and Ali Brivanlou groups, has provided an unprecedented opportunity to study human development at previously inaccessible and critical stages.[18] [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.[23] In 2023, her team was among several that reported creating the first human embryo models.[24] [25] [26]

Żernicka-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.[27]

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.[28]

The potential impact of Żernicka-Goetz's work is now becoming widely recognised through her public engagement.[29]

Her book “The Dance of Life” co-authored with Roger Highfield,[30] describes her scientific and personal journey devoted to understanding the earliest stages of our own life and the critical issue of women in science.

Awards and honors

Żernicka-Goetz was elected a member of the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) in 2007,[31] a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences (FMedSci),[32] 2013, and a foreign member of Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2016. Other awards and honours include:

Personal life

Żernicka-Goetz married David Glover in 2000 and has two children.

Notes and References

  1. Web site: MZG. zernickagoetzlab.pdn.cam.ac.uk. en-US. 2017-04-02.
  2. Web site: Magdalena Zernicka-Goetz — Department of Physiology, Development and Neuroscience. ri256@cam.ac.uk. www.pdn.cam.ac.uk. 24 September 2015. en. 2017-04-02.
  3. Web site: College Fellows and Staff - Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge University. www.sid.cam.ac.uk. en. 2017-04-02.
  4. Web site: Magdalena Zernicka-Goetz Division of Biology and Biological Engineering. 2020-06-18. bbe70.divisions.caltech.edu.
  5. 2020. The world's top 50 thinkers for the Covid-19 age. 2020-09-08. Prospect. 7 September 2020. https://web.archive.org/web/20200907185002/https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/content/uploads/2020/09/PWTT20.pdf. dead.
  6. Wianny F, Zernicka-Goetz M . Specific interference with gene function by double-stranded RNA in early mouse development . Nature Cell Biology . 2 . 2 . 70–5 . February 2000 . 10655585 . 10.1038/35000016 . 2568655 .
  7. Piotrowska K, Zernicka-Goetz M . Role for sperm in spatial patterning of the early mouse embryo . Nature . 409 . 6819 . 517–21 . January 2001 . 11206548 . 10.1038/35054069 . 2001Natur.409..517P . 4416599 .
  8. Wang QT, Piotrowska K, Ciemerych MA, Milenkovic L, Scott MP, Davis RW, Zernicka-Goetz M . A genome-wide study of gene activity reveals developmental signaling pathways in the preimplantation mouse embryo . Developmental Cell . 6 . 1 . 133–44 . January 2004 . 14723853 . 10.1016/S1534-5807(03)00404-0 . free .
  9. Plusa B, Hadjantonakis AK, Gray D, Piotrowska-Nitsche K, Jedrusik A, Papaioannou VE, Glover DM, Zernicka-Goetz M . The first cleavage of the mouse zygote predicts the blastocyst axis . Nature . 434 . 7031 . 391–5 . March 2005 . 15772664 . 10.1038/nature03388 . 2005Natur.434..391P . 4354952 .
  10. Piotrowska-Nitsche K, Perea-Gomez A, Haraguchi S, Zernicka-Goetz M . Four-cell stage mouse blastomeres have different developmental properties . Development . 132 . 3 . 479–90 . February 2005 . 15634695 . 10.1242/dev.01602 . free .
  11. Torres-Padilla ME, Parfitt DE, Kouzarides T, Zernicka-Goetz M . Histone arginine methylation regulates pluripotency in the early mouse embryo . Nature . 445 . 7124 . 214–8 . January 2007 . 17215844 . 3353120 . 10.1038/nature05458. 2007Natur.445..214T .
  12. Jedrusik A, Bruce AW, Tan MH, Leong DE, Skamagki M, Yao M, Zernicka-Goetz M . Maternally and zygotically provided Cdx2 have novel and critical roles for early development of the mouse embryo . Developmental Biology . 344 . 1 . 66–78 . August 2010 . 20430022 . 2954319 . 10.1016/j.ydbio.2010.04.017.
  13. Morris SA, Teo RT, Li H, Robson P, Glover DM, Zernicka-Goetz M . 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 . April 2010 . 20308546 . 2852013 . 10.1073/pnas.0915063107. 2010PNAS..107.6364M . free .
  14. Goolam M, Scialdone A, Graham SJ, Macaulay IC, Jedrusik A, Hupalowska A, Voet T, Marioni JC, Zernicka-Goetz M . Heterogeneity in Oct4 and Sox2 Targets Biases Cell Fate in 4-Cell Mouse Embryos . Cell . 165 . 1 . 61–74 . March 2016 . 27015307 . 4819611 . 10.1016/j.cell.2016.01.047.
  15. White MD, Angiolini JF, Alvarez YD, Kaur G, Zhao ZW, Mocskos E, Bruno L, Bissiere S, Levi V, Plachta N . Long-Lived Binding of Sox2 to DNA Predicts Cell Fate in the Four-Cell Mouse Embryo . Cell . 165 . 1 . 75–87 . March 2016 . 27015308 . 10.1016/j.cell.2016.02.032 . free . 11336/48085 . free .
  16. Morris SA, Grewal S, Barrios F, Patankar SN, Strauss B, Buttery L, Alexander M, Shakesheff KM, Zernicka-Goetz M . Dynamics of anterior-posterior axis formation in the developing mouse embryo . Nature Communications . 3 . 673 . February 2012 . 22334076 . 3293425 . 10.1038/ncomms1671. 2012NatCo...3..673M .
  17. Bedzhov I, Zernicka-Goetz M . Self-organizing properties of mouse pluripotent cells initiate morphogenesis upon implantation . Cell . 156 . 5 . 1032–44 . February 2014 . 24529478 . 3991392 . 10.1016/j.cell.2014.01.023 .
  18. 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 . Self-organization of the human embryo in the absence of maternal tissues . Nature Cell Biology . 18 . 6 . 700–8 . June 2016 . 27144686 . 5049689 . 10.1038/ncb3347 .
  19. Deglincerti . Alessia . Croft . Gist F. . Pietila . Lauren N. . Zernicka-Goetz . Magdalena . Siggia . Eric D. . Brivanlou . Ali H. . May 2016 . Self-organization of the in vitro attached human embryo . Nature . en . 533 . 7602 . 251–254 . 10.1038/nature17948 . 27144363 . 2016Natur.533..251D . 4461915 . 1476-4687.
  20. News: Cambridge study named as People's Choice for Science magazine's 'Breakthrough of the Year 2016'. 2016-12-22. University of Cambridge. 2017-04-02. en.
  21. News: Ripples in spacetime: Science's 2016 Breakthrough of the Year. 2016-12-19. Science AAAS. 2017-04-02. en.
  22. Harrison SE, Sozen B, Christodoulou N, Kyprianou C, Zernicka-Goetz M . Assembly of embryonic and extra-embryonic stem cells to mimic embryogenesis in vitro . Science . 356 . 6334 . eaal1810 . March 2017 . 28254784 . 10.1126/science.aal1810 . 3863929 .
  23. News: Zimmer . Carl . 2023-06-24 . Scientists Debut Lab Models of Human Embryos . en-US . The New York Times . 2023-12-16 . 0362-4331.
  24. Biologists create detailed lab replicas of early human embryos . 2023-06-17 . 10.1126/science.adj2826 . en.
  25. News: Devlin . Hannah . 14 June 2023 . Synthetic human embryos created in groundbreaking advance . The Guardian . 15 June 2023.
  26. News: 15 June 2023 . First synthetic human embryo raises ethical issues . BBC News . 15 June 2023.
  27. Ajduk A, Ilozue T, Windsor S, Yu Y, Seres KB, Bomphrey RJ, Tom BD, Swann K, Thomas A, Graham C, Zernicka-Goetz M . Rhythmic actomyosin-driven contractions induced by sperm entry predict mammalian embryo viability . Nature Communications . 2 . 417 . August 2011 . 21829179 . 3265380 . 10.1038/ncomms1424. 2011NatCo...2..417A .
  28. Bolton H, Graham SJ, Van der Aa N, Kumar P, Theunis K, Fernandez Gallardo E, Voet T, Zernicka-Goetz M . Mouse model of chromosome mosaicism reveals lineage-specific depletion of aneuploid cells and normal developmental potential . Nature Communications . 7 . 11165 . March 2016 . 27021558 . 4820631 . 10.1038/ncomms11165. 2016NatCo...711165B .
  29. Vogel G . Pushing the limit . Science . 354 . 6311 . 404–407 . October 2016 . 27789822 . 10.1126/science.354.6311.404. 8343004 .
  30. The Dance of Life
  31. Web site: EMBO Members elected 2007.
  32. Web site: Professor Magdalena Zernicka-Goetz The Academy of Medical Sciences. acmedsci.ac.uk. 2017-04-02.
  33. News: Franklin-Wallis. Oliver. 23 May 2020. From pandemics to cancer: the science power list. en. The Times. 2020-05-26. 0140-0460.
  34. Web site: The Foundation . IVI . Fundación . www.ivifoundation.net . en-GB . 2017-04-02 .

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