Edward Michael De Robertis (born June 6, 1947) is an American embryologist and Professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. His work has contributed to the finding of conserved molecular processes of embryonic inductions that result in tissue differentiations during animal development. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2013, worked for the Howard Hughes Medical Institute for 26 years, and holds a Distinguished Professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. In 2009 Pope Benedict XVI appointed De Robertis to a lifetime position in the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, and in 2022 Pope Francis appointed him Councillor of the Academy for four years.

Early life and education

Edward De Robertis was born on June 6, 1947, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, while his father, neurobiologist Eduardo Diego De Robertis, was an MIT postdoctoral fellow. From the age of three, he was reared in Uruguay, where he received his medical degree at age 24 from the Universidad de la República del Uruguay. This was followed by the completion of a Ph.D. in chemistry at the Leloir Institute in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Career and research

De Robertis' postdoctoral training (1974-1977) was with Nobel laureate Sir John Gurdon at the Medical Research Council in Cambridge England. In 1984, De Robertis together with his late colleague Walter Gehring's and their laboratories cloned the first vertebrate development-controlling gene, today known as Hox-C6. Hox genes are responsible for anterior-to-posterior (head-to-tail) differentiation. The finding that Hox genes are conserved in both vertebrates and fruit flies heralded the beginning of the nascent scientific field of Evolution and Development, or Evo-Devo. In the 1990s, the laboratory of De Robertis dissected systematically the molecular pathways that mediate embryonic induction. Hans Spemann and Hilde Mangold discovered in 1924 an area of the amphibian embryo that, when transplanted, might promote the creation of Siamese twins. De Robertis identified the genes expressed in Xenopus embryos in this area, beginning with the goosecoid homeobox gene. 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, allowing BMPs to signal once more. In most bilateral species, such as fruit flies, spiders, early chordates, and mammals, this flow of growth factors dictates dorsal (back) to ventral (belly) cell and tissue differentiation. The Chordin/BMP/Tolloid biochemical pathway is cross-regulated by interactions with other signalling pathways such as Wnt. His lab has recently established a link between the canonical Wnt pathway, macropinocytosis, multivesicular endosomes, lysosomes, and protein degradation. He has also served for over two decades on the scientific board of the Pew Charitable Trusts Latin American Fellows programme.

Honors and awards

Publications