Claude Desplan, a biologist originally trained in France, has been a Silver Professor in
New York University
New York University (NYU) is a private research university in New York City. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded by a group of New Yorkers led by then-Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin.
In 1832, the ...
’s Department of Biology since 1999. His research centers on understanding the development and functioning of the visual system that underlies color vision using the fruit fly
Drosophila
''Drosophila'' () is a genus of flies, belonging to the family Drosophilidae, whose members are often called "small fruit flies" or (less frequently) pomace flies, vinegar flies, or wine flies, a reference to the characteristic of many species ...
as a model organism.
Biography
Born in Algeria, Desplan completed his undergraduate training at the Ecole Normale Supérieure in St. Cloud, France in 1975 and he received a Ph.D. at the
Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale (INSERM) in Paris in 1983. His thesis work, done under the guidance of Mohsen Moukhtar and Monique Thomasset, focused on calcium regulation.
As a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Pat O’Farrell at the
University of California, San Francisco
The University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) is a public land-grant research university in San Francisco, California. It is part of the University of California system and is dedicated entirely to health science and life science. It cond ...
, Desplan worked on the functional specificity of homeodomain proteins. He demonstrated that this conserved signature of many developmental genes is a DNA binding motif. In 1987, he joined the faculty of
Rockefeller University
The Rockefeller University is a private biomedical research and graduate-only university in New York City, New York. It focuses primarily on the biological and medical sciences and provides doctoral and postdoctoral education. It is classif ...
and was named a
Howard Hughes Medical Institute
The Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) is an American non-profit medical research organization based in Chevy Chase, Maryland. It was founded in 1953 by Howard Hughes, an American business magnate, investor, record-setting pilot, engineer, fil ...
Assistant and Associate Investigator. There, he pursued structural and functional studies of the homeodomain and Paired domain DNA binding domains and investigated the evolution of axis formation in insects. He accepted a position as Professor at New York University in 1999.
Scientific work
His laboratory has demonstrated the molecular mechanisms that pattern the fly color-sensing photoreceptor neurons and showed how stochastic decisions, a transcription factor network, and a tumor suppressor pathway contribute to the diversification of photoreceptors. It has also sought to understand how color information that arises within the retina is processed in the optic lobe of the Drosophila brain by investigating the development and function of this structure. His lab has shown that neuronal diversity in optic lobes is generated by the lineage of neural stem cells and by spatial input from patterning genes, and has provided a functional understanding of the neuronal and computational mechanisms that underlie color vision and motion detection (the ‘elementary motion detector’).
The Desplan laboratory also uses ‘evo-devo’ approaches to understand the evolution of patterning mechanisms in the early embryo and in the visual system using the wasp Nasonia and the ant Harpegnathos as model systems. He contributed broadly to the understanding of how insect embryos pattern their antero-posterior axis through extensive rewiring of a network of genes that are otherwise evolutionarily conserved in Drosophila.
Desplan serves on multiple scientific advisory boards and in funding agencies. He is an elected member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, an elected foreign member of EMBO, and an elected fellow of the New York Academy of Sciences.
Honors and awards
* 2020 Awarded the
Edwin Grant Conklin Medal The Edwin Grant Conklin Medal was inaugurated in 1995 by the Society for Developmental Biology in honor of the biologist Edwin Conklin. It is awarded annually to recognise a member of the society who has carried out distinguished and sustained resea ...
by the
Society for Developmental Biology
The Society for Developmental Biology (SDB), originally the Society for the Study of Development and Growth, is a professional society for scientists and professionals around the world whose research is focused on the study of the developmental b ...
* 2018 Elected to the
National Academy of Sciences
The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the Nati ...
.
References
External links
Official website at NYU
{{DEFAULTSORT:Desplan, Claude
Year of birth missing (living people)
Living people
French academics
French biologists
New York University faculty
Rockefeller University faculty