Nuclear Receptors in Development

Paul M. Wassarman, the Series Editor of CTDB since 2007, is Professor in the Dept. Developmental and Regenerative Biology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City. He received a Ph.D. in biochemistry from Brandeis University where he carried out thesis research in the Graduate Dept. Biochemistry with Professor Nathan O. Kaplan. In 1967 Wassarman joined the Division of Structural Studies at the MRC, Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, England as a Helen Hay Whitney Foundation Fellow with Sir John C. Kendrew. In 1972 he joined the faculty of the Dept. Biological Chemistry at Harvard Medical School and in 1986 moved to the Roche Institute of Molecular Biology where he was Chair of the Dept. Cell and Developmental Biology and Adjunct Professor in the Dept. Cell Biology, New York University School of Medicine. In 1996 he moved to the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai where he was the Lillian and Henry M. Stratton Professorial Chair of the Dept. Molecular, Cell, and Developmental Biology. Wassarman has published more than 200 research papers and reviews, dealing primarily with mammalian oogenesis, fertilization, and early embryogenesis.

Reshma Taneja obtained her Ph.D. at Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore working on gene transcription under the supervision of Professor KP Gopinathan. During the course of her postdoctoral training in Prof Pierre Chambon’s laboratory at the IGBMC in France she started working on a bHLH transcription factor Stra13, which was identified as a retinoic target gene. Her own laboratory initially at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, and currently at the National University of Singapore has had a long–standing interest in bHLH proteins and their ability to regulate cellular differentiation programs. Her group has made ground-breaking discoveries including generating Stra13-/- mice which first revealed its function in homeostasis of the immune system, as well as in skeletal muscle biology. In addition, her laboratory has identified novel transcriptional repression mechanisms mediated by recruitment of chromatin modifying enzymes that impact the function of bHLH factors in cellular differentiation. Currently, she holds an appointment at the Department of Physiology at the National University of Singapore and an adjunct appointment at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine. Her work has been well funded over the years from major funding bodies including the National Institutes of Health, The Muscular Dystrophy Association, March of Dimes Birth Defects Foundation, The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, Lupus Research Foundation in the USA; and from National Medical Research Council, Singapore Stem Cell Consortium, and Ministry of Education in Singapore. She has won several honors and awards including the prestigious Scholar Award from the Leukemia and Lymphoma society. She serves as reviewer for several international funding agencies including NIH, NSF, NSERC Canada, Research Grants Council Hong Kong, Israel Science Foundation, Telethon, Association Française contre les Myopathies, French National Research Agency, and the National Medical Research Council Singapore. She is currently on the editorial board of PLoS ONE, Differentiation, and Open Journal of Genetics.