Ellen V. Rothenberg (born 1952) is an American biologist who is a Distinguished Professor at the California Institute of Technology. She investigates the molecular mechanisms that underpin lineage choice. She is an elected fellow of the

American Association for the Advancement of Science The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is an American international non-profit organization with the stated goals of promoting cooperation among scientists, defending scientific freedom, encouraging scientific respons ...

, American Academy of Arts and Sciences and 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 ...

Early life and education

Rothenberg describes her upbringing as "sex-blind". She credits her parents with giving her "this heroic sense of one's potential" and says her father "taught eradvanced math and logic to the point that hegot in trouble with erteachers". As a child, Rothenberg originally wanted to become a physicist, but her high school biology classes inspired her to pursue biochemistry. Her high school teachers taught her about protein structure and how their structures confer biological function. While Rothenberg was an undergraduate student at Harvard University, her tutor, Boris Magasanik, inspired her to work on gene regulation. After earning her bachelor's degree, Rothenberg started a

MD–PhD The Doctorate of Medicine and of Philosophy (MD–PhD) is a dual doctoral degree for physician–scientists, combining the professional training of the Doctor of Medicine degree with the research expertise of the Doctor of Philosophy degree; the ...

program offered jointly by Harvard Medical School and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). She eventually dropped the MD but continued, at MIT, her PhD research with David Baltimore. She was the first to synthesize ''in vitro'' the genome of a

retrovirus A retrovirus is a type of virus that inserts a DNA copy of its RNA genome into the DNA of a host cell that it invades, thus changing the genome of that cell. Once inside the host cell's cytoplasm, the virus uses its own reverse transcriptase ...

. She completed her doctoral research in the Department of Biology and Center for Cancer Research in 1977. Rothenberg was a Jane Coffin Childs postdoctoral fellow with Edward Boyse at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City.

Research and career

In 1979, Rothenberg was appointed to the faculty at the

Salk Institute for Biological Studies The Salk Institute for Biological Studies is a scientific research institute located in the La Jolla community of San Diego, California, U.S. The independent, non-profit institute was founded in 1960 by Jonas Salk, the developer of the polio vacci ...

, where she spent three years before moving to the California Institute of Technology. Rothenberg investigates the molecular mechanisms that underpin

lineage selection Lineage selection occurs when the frequency of one biological lineage changes relative to another lineage. Lineage selection is a generalization of individual based natural selection; the stating that an allele is favored by natural selection is eq ...

. This includes the processes that determine the differentiation of

hematopoietic stem cell Hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) are the stem cells that give rise to other blood cells. This process is called haematopoiesis. In vertebrates, the very first definitive HSCs arise from the ventral endothelial wall of the embryonic aorta within t ...

s into T cells. There are several steps to this process, in which the multi-potentiality of stem cells are reduced whilst the T-cell specific differentiation events start. Rothenberg studies the transcription factors that induce gene expression of T-lineages. She identified that subtle changes in these pathways can predispose autoimmunity.

Awards and honors

* 2014 American Association of Immunologists Distinguished Lecturer * 2016 California Institute of Technology Richard P. Feynman Prize for Excellence in Teaching * 2017 Elected Fellow of the

* 2018 Elected Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences * 2021 Elected Member of the

Selected publications

* * * *Long Li; Mark Leid; Ellen V Rothenberg. (2 July 2010). An Early T Cell Lineage Commitment Checkpoint Dependent on the Transcription Factor Bcl11b Science; Vol. 329; No. 5987; https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1188989. PMC 2935300. PMID 20595614. *Jingli A Zhang; Ali Mortazavi; Brian A Williams; Barbara J Wold; Ellen V Rothenberg (13 April 2012). Dynamic Transformations of Genome-wide Epigenetic Marking and Transcriptional Control Establish T Cell Identity Cell; Vol. 149; No. 2; https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2012.01.056. PMID 22500808. PMC 3336965. *Hao Yuan Kueh; Ameya Champhekhar; Stephen L Nutt; Michael B Elowitz; Ellen V Rothenberg (9 August 2013). Positive Feedback Between PU.1 and the Cell Cycle Controls Myeloid Differentiation Science; Vol. 341; No. 6146; https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1240831. PMID 23868921. PMC 3913367.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Rothenberg, Ellen California Institute of Technology faculty Harvard College alumni Massachusetts Institute of Technology alumni American women biologists Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science 1952 births Living people 21st-century American women scientists 20th-century American women scientists 21st-century American biologists 20th-century American biologists