Biography of Kathryn V. Anderson

The metamorphosis of a fertilized egg into an adult organism requires a complex web of gene and protein interactions that scientists have attempted to elucidate for decades. Developmental biologist Kathryn V. Anderson has discovered many of the molecules that lay the groundwork for body plan differentiation, specifically those controlling the dorsal-ventral patterning in the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster. Such patterning is required for specification of the nervous system, muscles, and other mesodermal cells. These signaling pathways are conserved in higher organisms and, in humans and mice, are critical for the activity of the innate immune system. Over the past several years, Anderson has used the genetic approaches she helped pioneer in Drosophila and applied them to vertebrate development. In her Inaugural Article in this issue of PNAS (1), Anderson provides a progress report on her ongoing strategy to phenotypically identify genes that control early neural development and mesoderm formation in the mouse embryo. Anderson's interest in developmental biology was first piqued during a high school science fair project as she peered through a microscope at the “mermaid's wine glass.” She marveled at these single-celled algae, formally known as Acetabularia crenulata, with their slender stalks and umbrella-shaped caps, but most intriguing were the compartments within the cell. “I thought this was great that the different parts of the cell had different roles,” she says. Born in La Jolla, CA, in 1952, Anderson's interest in development was nurtured by her schooling and her supportive parents. At San Diego's Point Loma High School, a “great biology teacher,” Michael Lorch, fostered her interest in life sciences. Moving north to attend college at University of California, Berkeley, Anderson decided to pursue biochemistry. “I was pretty much a reductionist biologist, and biochemistry seemed the hardest of the biological sciences and the most objective,” …