 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
The Jean & Katsuma Dan Lectureship in Embryology/Physiology
6/21/10 - 9:00 AM, Lillie Auditorium
"The subcellular mechanics of tissue morphogenesis"
Thomas Lecuit, The Developmental Biology Institute of Marseilles
Thomas Lecuit received his scientific training from Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris and obtained a B.Sc. from Paris University in 1994. He completed his Ph.D. at the EMBL in Heidelberg-Germany in 1998 and served postdoctoral fellowships at the Department of Molecular Biology, Princeton University, Princeton from 1998 to 2001. He was appointed group leader at the IBDML in Marseille University, Marseille, France in 2001 and was tenured from CNRS at IBDML in 2006. His laboratory investigates the mechanisms of cell polarization, tissue morphogenesis and mechanics, using the fruitfly Drosophila as a model system. A major focus of the research is to understand how tissues maintain or lose control of the balance between robustness and plasticity.
Jean Clark and Katsuma Dan met when they were graduate students of the American physiologist, L.V. Heilbrunn. They studied with him at the University of Pennsylvania and spent their summers at the MBL. Katsuma Dan received his Ph.D. in 1934; Jean Clark received hers in 1936 after which they married and settled in Nagai, a five-mile bike ride to their laboratory in Misaki. They came from vastly different backgrounds: He was the son of a wealthy Japanese baron and she was from Presbyterian Yankee stock, but they shared a love for science, Woods Hole, and the MBL.
Katsuma Dan was one of Japan’s most influential and original biologists, a skillful administrator, and a scientific statesman. He was credited with original studies of marine organisms, their cell division, fertilization, early development, cell differentiation, and lunar-influenced spawning cycles. Katsuma Dan died in 1996 in Osaka, Japan, at the age of 91.
Jean Dan was the progenitor of an international effort to understand the interaction between the sperm and the egg; she discovered the acrosomal reaction that unites sperm to egg cell membrane. Her superb translations of Japanese biological works into English have been instrumental in the export of Japanese discovery to the West. Jean died in 1978, and her ashes were brought back from Japan and scattered on the water near Nobska Point.
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
