Morphogens, modeling and patterning the neural tube: an interview with James Briscoe.

James Briscoe

doi:10.1186/s12915-014-0105-1

Abstract

James Briscoe has a BSc in Microbiology and Virology (from the University of Warwick, UK) and a PhD in Molecular and Cellular Biology (from the Imperial Cancer Research Fund, London, now Cancer Research UK). He started working on the development of the neural tube in the lab of Tom Jessel as a postdoctoral fellow, establishing that there was graded sonic hedgehog signaling in the ventral neural tube. He is currently a group leader and Head of Division in Developmental Biology at the MRC National Institute for Medical Research (which will become part of the Francis Crick Institute in April 2015). He is working to understand the molecular and cellular mechanisms of graded signaling in the vertebrate neural tube.We interviewed him about the development of ideas on morphogenetic gradients and his own work on modeling the development of the neural tube for our series on modeling in biology.

Highlights

James Briscoe has a BSc in Microbiology and Virology and a PhD in Molecular and Cellular Biology
If Sonic hedgehog provides the morphogen gradient, what about the response of the cells, and the affinity-threshold idea? The work in my lab over the last few years has shown that in cells responding to Shh in the neural tube, a series of transcription factors form a network of regulatory interactions
When we look at different tissues that appear to be patterned by morphogens, whether the vertebrate neural tube or the Drosophila embryo, we know a lot of the molecular detail and this is clearly different for different tissues

Summary

Introduction

James Briscoe has a BSc in Microbiology and Virology (from the University of Warwick, UK) and a PhD in Molecular and Cellular Biology (from the Imperial Cancer Research Fund, London, Cancer Research UK). The work in my lab over the last few years has shown that in cells responding to Shh in the neural tube, a series of transcription factors form a network of regulatory interactions.

Results

Conclusion