Athanasia Papalopulu (born 1962) is a

Wellcome Trust The Wellcome Trust is a charitable foundation focused on health research based in London, in the United Kingdom. It was established in 1936 with legacies from the pharmaceutical magnate Henry Wellcome (founder of one of the predecessors of Glaxo ...

senior

research fellow A research fellow is an academic research position at a university or a similar research institution, usually for academic staff or faculty members. A research fellow may act either as an independent investigator or under the supervision of a pr ...

and

Professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an academic rank at universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a "person who professes". Professors ...

Developmental Neuroscience The development of the nervous system, or neural development (neurodevelopment), refers to the processes that generate, shape, and reshape the nervous system of animals, from the earliest stages of embryonic development to adulthood. The fiel ...

in the School of Biological Sciences, University of Manchester.

Education

After completing her undergraduate degree in Pharmacy at the

Aristotle University of Thessaloniki Aristotle (; grc-gre, Ἀριστοτέλης ''Aristotélēs'', ; 384–322 BC) was a Greek philosopher and polymath during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. Taught by Plato, he was the founder of the Peripatetic school of phil ...

, Greece, Nancy Papalopulu moved to

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

in 1986 to do a PhD at the

National Institute for Medical Research The National Institute for Medical Research (commonly abbreviated to NIMR), was a medical research institute based in Mill Hill, on the outskirts of north London, England. It was funded by the Medical Research Council (MRC); In 2016, the NIMR b ...

, where she became one of Robb Krumlauf's first graduate students. There she studied the role of

Hox genes Hox genes, a subset of homeobox genes, are a group of related genes that specify regions of the body plan of an embryo along the head-tail axis of animals. Hox proteins encode and specify the characteristics of 'position', ensuring that the co ...

in patterning the

nervous system In biology, the nervous system is the highly complex part of an animal that coordinates its actions and sensory information by transmitting signals to and from different parts of its body. The nervous system detects environmental changes ...

. She completed her PhD in 1991.

Career and research

In 1991, she moved to La Jolla, California to do postdoctoral work under the supervision of Chris Kintner at the

Salk Institute 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 ...

. There she continued to investigate factors controlling neuronal patterning in the

vertebrate Vertebrates () comprise all animal taxa within the subphylum Vertebrata () (chordates with backbones), including all mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and fish. Vertebrates represent the overwhelming majority of the phylum Chordata, with c ...

embryo using ''

Xenopus ''Xenopus'' () (Gk., ξενος, ''xenos''=strange, πους, ''pous''=foot, commonly known as the clawed frog) is a genus of highly aquatic frogs native to sub-Saharan Africa. Twenty species are currently described within it. The two best-know ...

'' as a model system. It was at this point she began to become interested in how the timing of neuronal differentiation is controlled. In 1997, Nancy was awarded a

career developmental award and moved back to the UK to set up her own lab at the

Gurdon Institute The Gurdon Institute (officially the Wellcome/Cancer Research UK Gurdon Institute) is a research facility at the University of Cambridge, specialising in developmental biology and cancer biology. History The Institute was founded in 1989 to prov ...

at the

University of Cambridge The University of Cambridge is a public collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209 and granted a royal charter by Henry III in 1231, Cambridge is the world's third oldest surviving university and one of its most pr ...

to pursue this question. In Cambridge, Nancy shared lab space with Sir

John Gurdon Sir John Bertrand Gurdon (born 2 October 1933) is a British developmental biologist. He is best known for his pioneering research in nuclear transplantation and cloning. He was awarded the Lasker Award in 2009. In 2012, he and Shinya Yamanaka ...

, who won the

Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine is awarded yearly by the Nobel Assembly at the Karolinska Institute for outstanding discoveries in physiology or medicine. The Nobel Prize is not a single prize, but five separate prizes that, accord ...

in 2012 for his seminal work on ''Xenopus'' embryos that has underpinned our understanding of nuclear reprogramming. Her own work, and that of her lab members, focused on understanding how the

cell cycle The cell cycle, or cell-division cycle, is the series of events that take place in a cell that cause it to divide into two daughter cells. These events include the duplication of its DNA (DNA replication) and some of its organelles, and sub ...

, cell polarity and location controls the balance of neuronal

progenitor cell A progenitor cell is a biological cell that can differentiate into a specific cell type. Stem cells and progenitor cells have this ability in common. However, stem cells are less specified than progenitor cells. Progenitor cells can only differ ...

maintenance and differentiation in the developing vertebrate

. In 2006, she moved her lab to the

University of Manchester , mottoeng = Knowledge, Wisdom, Humanity , established = 2004 – University of Manchester Predecessor institutions: 1956 – UMIST (as university college; university 1994) 1904 – Victoria University of Manchester 1880 – Victoria Univ ...

, where she became research group leader of the developmental biology group in the Faculty of Life Sciences. In

Manchester Manchester () is a city in Greater Manchester, England. It had a population of 552,000 in 2021. It is bordered by the Cheshire Plain to the south, the Pennines to the north and east, and the neighbouring city of Salford to the west. The t ...

she has continued to investigate how the timing of neurogenesis is regulated during vertebrate development. Using

computational modeling Computer simulation is the process of mathematical modelling, performed on a computer, which is designed to predict the behaviour of, or the outcome of, a real-world or physical system. The reliability of some mathematical models can be dete ...

and experimental biology her group has discovered that oscillations of the

microRNA MicroRNA (miRNA) are small, single-stranded, non-coding RNA molecules containing 21 to 23 nucleotides. Found in plants, animals and some viruses, miRNAs are involved in RNA silencing and post-transcriptional regulation of gene expression. mi ...

miR-9 The miR-9 microRNA (homology (biology), homologous to miR-79), is a short non-coding RNA gene involved in gene regulation. The mature ~21nt miRNAs are processed from hairpin precursor sequences by the Dicer enzyme. The dominant mature miRNA seque ...

targets an important regulator of neuronal differentiation,

HES1 Transcription factor HES1 (hairy and enhancer of split-1) is a protein that is encoded by the ''Hes1'' gene, and is the mammalian homolog of the hairy gene in ''Drosophila.'' HES1 is one of the seven members of the Hes gene family (HES1-7). Hes ge ...

, allowing for precisely timed waves of neurogenesis. From January 2011 - January 2014, Nancy was tissue systems section head, representing developmental biology and the Wellcome Trust Centre for Cell-Matrix Research, approximately 40 research groups in the Faculty of Life Sciences. She is also an active member of the university's Women in Science group.

Awards and honours

* Researcher of the Year Award, Faculty of Life Sciences,

, 2013 * Elected a

Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences Fellowship of the Academy of Medical Sciences (FMedSci) is an award for medical scientists who are judged by the UK Academy of Medical Sciences for the "excellence of their science, their contribution to medicine and society and the range of th ...

(FMedSci), May 2013 * Elected a member of

European Molecular Biology Organisation The European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) is a professional, non-profit organization of more than 1,800 life scientists. Its goal is to promote research in life science and enable international exchange between scientists. It co-funds cour ...

(EMBO) May 2012 * Elected Board Member of the International Society of Differentiation, November 2012 – 2018; 6 yr term * Elected to the British Society of Cell Biology Committee, November 2012 * Elected a

Fellow of the Royal Society of Biology Fellowship of the Royal Society of Biology (FRSB), previously Fellowship of the Society of Biology (FSB), is an award and fellowship granted to individuals that the Royal Society of Biology has adjudged to have made a "prominent contribution to ...

(FRSB), June 2011 * Elected Committee member and Executive Officer (Meetings Officer) of the British Society of Developmental Biology (BSDB), 2003–2009, overseeing the organisation of BSDB Spring and Fall Conferences. *

senior

, 2000-2015 (renewed twice)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Papalopulu, Nancy 1962 births Living people Greek neuroscientists Greek women neuroscientists Aristotle University of Thessaloniki alumni Academics of the University of Manchester Fellows of the Academy of Medical Sciences (United Kingdom) Fellows of the Royal Society of Biology Members of the European Molecular Biology Organization