Andrés Carrasco (1946–2014)

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Developmental Biology 393 (2014) 1–2 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Developmental Biology journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/developmentalbiology In Memoriam Andres Carrasco (1946–2014) Professor Andres Eduardo Carrasco died on May 10, 2014 after a short illness. He was only 67 years old, still with great vitality and passion for science. Andres was trained as a Medical Doctor, graduating from the School of Medicine, University of Buenos Aires in 1971. He then taught physiology, cell biology and embry- ology at UBA until 1981. Andres then moved to the Biocenter of the University of Basel, Switzerland, where he made his first major discovery as a Postdoctoral Fellow in the laboratory of Eddy de Robertis. Together with Bill McGinnis in Walter Gehring's lab, Andres cloned and sequenced the first vertebrate homeobox gene of the Hox/homeotic type, the eponymous Andres Carrasco 1 (AC1), now known as Hoxc6 (Carrasco et al., 1984. Cell 37, 409–414). This provided the best evidence that genes involved in the patterning of the anterior–posterior axis of insect embryos were conserved in vertebrates. This was a seminal discovery in Developmental Biology as homeobox genes of the Hox type represented the first development-controlling gene identified in vertebrates. In 1984, Andres moved to Indiana University as a Senior Research Fellow with George Malacinski. It was here that Andres performed the first in situ hybridizations in Xenopus laevis embryos, localizing Hoxc6 in late gastrula, neurula and tadpole http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ydbio.2014.07.001 embryos. Although his methodology was superseded by the faster and more generally applicable whole mount in situ hybridization of Harland and colleagues, Andres was the first to show the spatial distribution of a Hox gene with sufficient sensitivity to detect a low abundance mRNA in amphibian embryos (Carrasco and Malacinski, 1987. Developmental Biology 121, 69–81). By 1988, antisense oligonucleotide technology had become a promising approach to block the function of specific mRNAs. Andres moved to Larry Etkin's laboratory at the University of Texas in Houston to explore the use of this technology to destroy specific maternal mRNAs using in vitro matured oocytes. Disappointingly, the main result of these studies was to show that a highly localized maternal mRNA (xlgv7) was apparently dispensable for normal development (Kloc et al., 1989. Development 107, 899–907). In 1990, Andres returned to the city he loved, Buenos Aires, aiming to build developmental biology in Argentina. He secured a position at the National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET) at his alma mater. Despite the difficult financial climate in Argentina, Andres and his colleagues published a succession of high quality papers over the next 24 years, first on Hox genes and their regulation by retinoic acid, then extending their interest towards the involvement of sonic hedgehog, retinoic acid and presenilin in neurogenesis, and later on the role of Notch signaling during early embryogenesis. In addition to his scientific research, Andres served as the director of CONICET from 2000 to 2001 (a most difficult time economically in Argentina) and as Under- secretary for Scientific and Technological Innovation of the Ministry of National Defense. Andres was also a long time member of the Society for Developmental Biology. I first met Andres at an International Xenopus meeting in 1996. His cloning of AC1 inspired me as a Ph.D. student and how to determine its function, in vivo, was the topic of my advancement to candidacy proposal, so I was happy to finally meet him. Andres and I talked and argued for many hours about the merits of various approaches to science, politics, personal philosophy, fatherhood, etc. One of Andres's most notable qualities was his passion and will- ingness to debate a topic almost endlessly, particularly with respect to its inherent morality. He was a person who would rather die than compromise fundamental principles. Over the years, Andres became like an elder brother to me and we often discussed projects and experiments with each other and our respective students and postdocs. I and many of the other postdocs from the early years in Eddy de Robertis's lab jokingly called him “Il Padrino” – the godfather of the De Robertis postdocs. This amused Andres greatly because he and Eddy had a difficult relationship at best.