William McGinnis, Ph.D

is a molecular biology, molecular biologist and professor of biology at the

University of California San Diego The University of California, San Diego (UC San Diego or colloquially, UCSD) is a public land-grant research university in San Diego, California. Established in 1960 near the pre-existing Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego is t ...

. At UC San Diego he has also served as the Chairman of the Department of Biology from July 1998 - June 1999, as Associate Dean of the Division of Natural Sciences from July 1, 1999 - June 2000, and as Interim Dean of the newly established Division of Biological Sciences from July 1, 2000 - February 1, 2001. Dr. McGinnis was appointed Dean of the Divisional Biological Sciences on July 1, 2013. He received his Ph.D. from

UC Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public university, public land-grant university, land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of Californi ...

in 1982 and was a

Jane Coffin Childs The Jane Coffin Childs Memorial Fund for Medical Research (the "JCC"), established in 1937, awards the "Jane Coffin Childs Postdoctoral Fellowship" for research in the medical and related sciences bearing on cancer. History The Fund was founded ...

postdoctoral fellow at the

University of Basel The University of Basel (Latin: ''Universitas Basiliensis'', German: ''Universität Basel'') is a university in Basel, Switzerland. Founded on 4 April 1460, it is Switzerland's oldest university and among the world's oldest surviving universit ...

. From 1984 to 1995, he was on the faculty of

Yale University Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wo ...

. He received a Searle Scholar Award, a Presidential Young Investigator Award, and a Dreyfuss Teacher/Scholar Award. Dr. McGinnis was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2010, and the National Academy of Sciences in 2019.

Research

McGinnis studies the evolutionary changes in

transcription factor In molecular biology, a transcription factor (TF) (or sequence-specific DNA-binding factor) is a protein that controls the rate of transcription of genetic information from DNA to messenger RNA, by binding to a specific DNA sequence. The fu ...

s by looking at the

Hox gene 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 cor ...

s. His main research has been in ''

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 ...

'', comparing Hox genes within that species with Hox genes in other species, to see they are conserved (kept intact) during evolution. He also studies how Hox transcription functions control

morphogenesis Morphogenesis (from the Greek ''morphê'' shape and ''genesis'' creation, literally "the generation of form") is the biological process that causes a cell, tissue or organism to develop its shape. It is one of three fundamental aspects of devel ...

, and how changes in the Hox proteins, cofactors, and DNA targets affect

morphology Morphology, from the Greek and meaning "study of shape", may refer to: Disciplines * Morphology (archaeology), study of the shapes or forms of artifacts * Morphology (astronomy), study of the shape of astronomical objects such as nebulae, galaxies ...

. One long-term objective of the research in his lab is to understand the molecular interactions that underlie functional specificity in the Hox patterning system. McGinnis is notable for his co-discovery of

homeobox A homeobox is a DNA sequence, around 180 base pairs long, that regulates large-scale anatomical features in the early stages of embryonic development. For instance, mutations in a homeobox may change large-scale anatomical features of the full- ...

, with Michael S. Levine. But importantly, for the discovery that Hox (homeobox) genes were found in vertebrates and a wide variety of animals, conserved, and were expressed in different regions of the vertebrate embryonic body axis, and that mammal Hox genes could function as anterior-posterior embryonic regulators of body axis specification, in flies as well as mammals. That is, Hox gene functions were similar in controlling body axis patterning in both flies and other more complicated animals, such as mammals.

Publications

McGinnis has published in

Science Science is a systematic endeavor that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe. Science may be as old as the human species, and some of the earliest archeological evidence for ...

Oxford University Press Oxford University Press (OUP) is the university press of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world, and its printing history dates back to the 1480s. Having been officially granted the legal right to print books ...

Nature Nature, in the broadest sense, is the physics, physical world or universe. "Nature" can refer to the phenomenon, phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general. The study of nature is a large, if not the only, part of science. ...

EMBO Journal
an
The American Journal of Human Genetics

Articles

References

External links

McGinnis Lab
{{DEFAULTSORT:McGinnis, William Living people University of California, San Diego faculty American molecular biologists Year of birth missing (living people) Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences