Alexander F. Schier

Alexander F. Schier (born 1964) is a Professor of Cell Biology and the Director of the Biozentrum University of Basel, Switzerland.

Schier received a B.A. in cell biology in 1988 from th
Biozentrum
of the University of Basel, Switzerland, followed by a PhD in cell biology in 1992 under Walter J. Gehring, also from the University of Basel, Switzerland. He conducted his postdoctoral research in Wolfgang Driever's lab at th
Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard University
in Boston, US. In 1996, Schier was recruited as assistant professor in the Developmental Genetics Program to th
Skirball Institute
and Department of Cell Biology, NYU School of Medicine.

From 2005 to 2019, he was a professor at th
Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology
Harvard University, Faculty of Arts and Sciences. In 2013 he became the Leo Erikson Life Sciences Professor. He chaired the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology from 2014 to 2017. Since 2017 Schier is a site director of the Allen Discovery Center for Cell Lineage Tracing. In 2018, Schier became the Director of the Biozentrum of the University of Basel as well as Professor of Cell Biology.

Research

Schier is internationally recognized for his pioneering work on vertebrate development using zebrafish (''Danio rerio'') as a model organism. During his postdoctoral work, Schier and colleagues performed one of the first large-scale forward genetic screens in a vertebrate.

In his own lab, Schier has made fundamental contributions to the understanding of the molecular basis of vertebrate embryogenesis, including signaling,Zhang, J., Talbot, W.S., and Schier, A.F. (1998). Positional cloning identifies zebrafish one-eyed pinhead as a permissive EGF-related ligand required during gastrulation. Cell 92, 241-251.Gritsman, K., Zhang, J., Cheng, S., Heckscher, E., Talbot, W.S., and Schier, A.F. (1999). The EGF-CFC protein one-eyed pinhead is essential for nodal signaling. Cell 97, 121-132.Chen, Y. and Schier, A.F. (2001). The zebrafish nodal signal squint functions as a morphogen. Nature 411, 607-610.Choi, W.-Y., Giraldez, A.J. and Schier, A.F. (2007). Target Protectors reveal dampening and balancing of Nodal agonist and antagonist by miR-430. Science 318, 271-274.Mueller, P. Rogers, K.W., Jordan, B.M.; Lee, J.S., Robson, D., Ramanathan, S., and Schier A.F. (2012). Differential diffusivity of Nodal and Lefty underlies a reaction-diffusion patterning system. Science 336, 721-4.Pauli, A., Norris, M.L., Valen, E., Chew, G.-L., Gagnon, J.A., Zimmerman, S., Mitchell, A., Ma, J., Dubrulle, J., Reyon, D., Tsai, S.Q., Joung, J.K., Saghatelian, A., and Schier, A.F. (2014). Toddler: an embryonic signal that promotes cell movement via Apelin receptors. Science 343, 1248636 cell fate determination, cell movement, the maternal-zygotic transition,Giraldez, A.J., Mishima, Y., Rihel, J., Grocock, R.J., Van Dongen, S., Inoue, K., Enright, A.J. and Schier, A.F. (2006). Zebrafish miR-430 promotes deadenylation and clearance of maternal mRNAs. Science 312, 75-79. microRNAs, chromatin and non-coding RNAs.Pauli, A., Valen, E., Lin, M.F., Garber, M., Vastenhouw, N.L., Levin, J.Z., Fan, L., Sandelin, A., Rinn, J.L., Regev, A., and Schier, A.F. (2012). Systematic identification of long noncoding RNAs expressed during zebrafish embryogenesis. Genome Research 22, 577-91. Epub 2011 Nov 22. Schier's more recent interest in behavior has established zebrafish as a model for sleep and behavioral research, determined neural circuits that underlie sleep identified small molecule sleep regulators and studied the roles of schizophrenia-associated genes REF Thyme Cell 2019.

He has contributed to the development of zebrafish as model system, including positional cloning, germ-line replacement to generate maternal-effect mutants, photobleaching and photo conversion, Brainbow imaging, brain activity atlas,Randlett, O., Wee, C., Naumann, E.A., Nnaemeka, O., Schoppik, D., Fitzgerald, J.E., Portugues, R., Lacoste, A., Riegler, C., Engert, F.*, and Schier, A.F. * (2015). Whole-brain activity mapping onto a zebrafish brain atlas. Nature Methods 12, 1039-46. small molecule profiling, transcriptomicsSatija, R., Farrell, J., Gennert, D., Schier, A.F., and Regev, A. (2015). Seurat: Spatial reconstruction of single-cell gene expression. Nature Biotechnology 33, 495-502. and epigenomics, gene annotation,Chew, G.-L., Pauli, A, and Schier, A.F. (2016). Conservation of uORF repressiveness and sequence features in mouse, human and zebrafish. Nature Communications 7, 11663. CRISPR/Cas9 genome editing,Thyme, S. and Schier, A.F. (2016). Polq-Mediated End Joining Is Essential for Surviving DNA Double-Strand Breaks during Early Zebrafish Development. Cell Reports 15, 1611-1613.Thyme, S.B., Akhmetova, L., Montague, T.G., Valen, E. and Schier, A.F. (2016). Internal guide RNA interactions interfere with Cas9-mediated cleavage. Nature Communications 7, 11750. lineage tracing by genomic barcode editingMcKenna, A., Findlay, G.F., Gagnon, J.A., Horwitz, M.S., Schier, A.F., and Shendure, J. (2016). Whole organism lineage tracing by combinatorial and cumulative genome editing. Science aaf7907. and reconstruction of developmental trajectories by single-cell RNA-sequencing.Farrell, Jeffrey A; Wang, Yiqun; Riesenfeld, Samantha J; Shekhar, Karthik; Regev, Aviv; Schier, Alexander F (2018). Single-cell reconstruction of developmental trajectories during zebrafish embryogenesis. Science, 360 (6392), 6.

Mentoring

Schier is also well known for having an unusually high rate of placing trainees in academic positions. Previous mentees have gone on to PI positions at Yale, Princeton, Caltech, UCLA, University of Toronto, U Mass Amherst, NYU School of Medicine, University College London, MPI Dresden, University of Tokyo, UCSD, University of Calgary, MPI Tuebingen, IMP Vienna, University of Utah, Cambridge University and NIH. Key to his mentoring philosophy are five questions he has developed to sharpen the thoughts of his mentees:

*Do you work on an important problem?
*Do you work with sustained concentration?
*Do you have a sense of urgency?
*Are you able to troubleshoot?
*Do you have the killer instinct to do the key experiments that will result in a coherent, conclusive and publishable study?

Awards

*1999-2002 McKnight Scholar for Neuroscience
*2001-2005 Irma T. Hirschl Scholar
*2002-2005 Established Investigator of the American Heart Association
*2006 Harland Winfield Mossman Developmental Biologists Award of the American Asc. of Anatomists
*2006-2008 McKnight Neuroscience of Brain Disorders Award
*2014 Everett Mendelsohn Excellence in Mentoring Award from Harvard's Graduate Student Council
*2016 NIH MERIT Award
*2016 Bjorkman-Strominger-Wiley Prize for Collaboration (with Florian Engert)
*2017 NIH Pioneer Award
*2018 Election to EMBO
*2018 Science “Breakthrough of the Year 2018”
*2020 ERC Advanced Grant
*2020 George Streisinger Award of the International Zebrafish Society
*2020 Election to National Academy of Sciences
*2020 Election to Academia Europaea
*2021 Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science

References

External links

Schier lab website Harvard

Schier website BiozentrumHarvard University MCB Department homepageHarvard University MCB Department Faculty: Alex Schier

Faculty of 1000

{{DEFAULTSORT:Schier, Alexander F.
1964 births
Living people
Harvard University faculty
University of Basel alumni