Edward M De Robertis

Biography

Edward De Robertis (a.k.a. Eddy) was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on June 6, 1947, while his father, Eduardo de Robertis, was a postdoctoral fellow at MIT. He was raised in Uruguay since age three, where he completed MD studies by age 24. This was followed by a Ph.D. in Chemistry at the Leloir Institute in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

His postdoctoral training was in Cambridge, England with Sir John Gurdon. Following three years as staff member at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, in 1980 De Robertis was appointed full Professor at the University of Basel, Switzerland.

De Robertis has been the Norman Sprague Jr. Professor of Biological Chemistry at the University of California at Los Angeles since 1985, where he also is an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute since 1994.

Scientific Activity

De Robertis carried out his postdoctoral training (1974–1977) with Sir John Gurdon, the distinguished developmental biologist, at the Medical Research Council in the United Kingdom. By transplanting Xenopus kidney cell nuclei into oocytes of a different amphibian species, they demonstrated that nuclear reprogramming of protein-coding genes was caused by oocyte cytoplasm. In 1978 he became staff scientist at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, working on the nucleo-cytoplasmic transport of macromolecules.

In 1984, De Robertis, together with the laboratory of his colleague Walter Gehring, isolated the first vertebrate development-controlling gene, now called Hox-C6. Hox genes determine anterior (head) to posterior (tail) differentiation. The discovery that Hox genes were conserved between vertebrates and fruit flies marked the beginning of the young scientific discipline of Evolution and Development, Evo-Devo.

In the 1990s De Robertis' research laboratory carried out the systematic dissection of the molecular mechanisms that mediate embryonic induction. In 1924 Hans Spemann and Hilde Mangold identified a region of the amphibian embryo that was able to induce the formation of Siamese twins after transplantation. De Robertis isolated genes expressed in this region, starting with a homeobox gene called Goosecoid. Together with his colleagues, he discovered Chordin, a protein secreted by dorsal cells that binds Bone Morphogenetic Protein (BMP) growth factors facilitating their transport to the ventral side of the embryo, where Chordin is digested by a protease called Tolloid, so that BMPs can signal again. This flow of growth factors determines dorsal (back) to ventral (belly) cell and tissue differentiations in many bilateral animals, such as fruit flies, spiders, early chordates and mammals. The Chordin/BMP/Tolloid biochemical pathway is regulated by feedback inhibitors and cross-talk with other signaling pathways. Recently his laboratory has discovered a close relationship between the canonical Wnt pathway, multivesicular endosomes and protein degradation.

De Robertis has been active in international scientific affairs. He served as president of the International Society of Developmental Biologists (ISDB) from 2002 to 2006. During this period, ISDB sponsored the formation of the Latin American Society of Developmental Biology and the Asian-Pacific Network of Developmental Biologists. He has also served on the scientific board of the Pew Charitable Trusts Latin American Fellows program for almost two decades. Recently, De Robertis was appointed to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences by Pope Benedict XVI.

In summary, Eddy De Robertis has been a pioneer in the remarkable current realization that the development of all animals is regulated by an ancestral genetic tool-kit. This use of conserved gene networks during embryonic development has channeled the outcomes of evolution by natural selection arising from Urbilateria, the last common ancestor of vertebrates and invertebrates.

Honors and Awards