“Metabolic regulation of developmental rate in mouse and human cells.”
All mammalian embryos undergo a highly conserved sequence of developmental events, but different species complete this sequence at significantly different speeds.
To study species-specific developmental rates, Margarete Diaz Cuadros (Harvard Medical School, lab of Olivier Pourquie) established in-vitro models of the mouse and human segmentation clock. This clock controls the production of vertebral precursors and provides a quantitative measure of developmental rate. Using this system, Diaz Cuadros uncovered that accelerated metabolism in mouse cells compared to human cells gives rise to faster protein production, which ultimately allows mouse cells to differentiate and proliferate faster than human cells. In the long term, these findings will provide a basis for the acceleration of human pluripotent stem cell differentiation for disease modelling and cell-based therapies.
Before joining Harvard Medical School in 2015, Margarete Diaz Cuadros did her undergraduate studies at Columbia University, New York. She became an independent fellow and started her own lab at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School earlier this year.
More on the Birnstiel Award: https://www.imp.ac.at/birnstiel-award
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