McGinnis Lab Home Page

Seven Hox transcript patterns in a single embryo.
microRNA-10 transcript pattern (red) in embryo
Aseptic wound response pathway in embryos
 Transcription units: Dfd, Scr, and ftz in nuclei

  

William McGinnis
University of California, San Diego
Division of Biology
Section of Cell & Developmental Biology
9500 Gilman Drive
La Jolla, CA 92093-0349
(858) 822-0458

Bill McGinnis received his Ph.D. from UC Berkeley in 1982 and was a Jane Coffin Childs postdoctoral fellow at the University of Basel. He was a Professor at Yale University from 1984 until 1995, then moved his lab to the University of California, San Diego. He served as the Chairman of the Department of Biology from July 1998 - June 1999, as Associate Dean of the Division of Natural Sciences from July 1, 1999 - June 2000, and as Interim Dean of the newly established Division of Biological Sciences from July 1, 2000 - February 1, 2001.

The McGinnis lab is located at the University of California, San Diego, in La Jolla, CA. The lab is on the fourth floor of Bonner Hall, on the same floor as the laboratories of James Posakony, Ethan Bier, Raffi Aroian, Amy Pasquinelli,William Schafer and John Newport. Our labs have overlapping interests, shared resources, and fruitful interactions. The University and the greater La Jolla area form a community rich in world class research in life sciences and biotechnology. We are within walking distance of the Salk Institute, the Scripps Research Institute, the Burnham Research Institute and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Graduate students in the Division of Biological Sciences at UCSD enjoy the opportunity to rotate through and to choose labs at both the UCSD campus and the Salk Institute. Return to top of page / People / Publications

Research Interests:

1. Control of architectural pattern in developing fields of embryonic cells; focused on how Hox transcription functions control morphogenesis, and how the Hox proteins, their cofactors, and their DNA targets evolve to diversify morphology. For a recent review on this area see Pearson et al, 2005.

2. MicroRNA (mir-10) involvement in early embryonic patterning via control of Hox gene function. MicroRNAs regulate the temporal and spatial pattern of gene function via degradation or repression of target messenger RNAs. We are exploring the function of mir-10, which is conserved in all bilateral animals between Dfd/Hox4 and Scr/Hox5, and is expressed in a pattern reminiscent of Hox proteins in embryos (see picture above).

3. We are exploring a novel epidermal wound response pathway in Drosophila. This pathway is activated by loss of all Hox functions in a body segment, or by aseptic puncture wounds. We have aseptic wound response genes, and the cis-regulatory regions that activate reporter gene expression in cells adjacent to wounds (see picture above). The activation of these genes in response to breaks in the integument requires the Grainy head transcription factor. Grainy head proteins homologs are conspicuously expressed in the barrier epithelium of both flies and mammals, and required for the formation and repair of an impermeable "skin" whether that skin is make of keratinocytes or cuticle. Epidermal barrier wound repair.pdf

4. We are developing semi-automated methods to map transcriptional activation patterns of many genes simultaneously in nuclei, in order to accelerate the dissection of gene regulatory pathways during animal development. For a recent paper on this, see Kosman et al. 2004.

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