SCIENCE AT THE SHINE DOME canberra 7 - 9 may 2008
New Fellows Seminar
Wednesday, 7 May 2008
Professor Patrick Tam
Head, Embryology Unit, Children’s Medical Research Institute
Patrick Tam is an NHMRC senior principal research fellow and holds a conjoint professorial appointment in the Faculty of Medicine, University of Sydney and an honorary professorship at the University of Hong Kong. His research focuses on the molecular and cellular mechanisms of embryonic development and congenital malformations. He pioneered the application of technologies of embryological and genetic manipulation to study the mechanism of the formation of the basic body plan during embryogenesis. He plays a prominent leadership role through substantial commitments to advisory, consultative, directorate and editorial activities in the international arena. He was awarded the Symington Prize of the Anatomical Society of Great Britain and Ireland, the 2007 Australia and New Zealand Society for Cell and Developmental Biology President’s Medal, and elected a Fellow of the Institute of Biology UK.
The blueprint of development: How a mouse embryo is built
Embryonic development is accomplished by an intricate choreography of gene activity and cellular functions, whereby a fertilised egg is transformed into a foetus made of many different types of cells. A critical milestone in this journey is the establishment of a blueprint that shows how these cells assemble to form different parts of the body. Our research has focused on the study of this basic body plan by an experimental approach known as fate mapping. We collated extensive information on the developmental history of every cell population in an early mouse embryo and the role of cell-to-cell communication in the formation of the body plan. The lessons learned from these studies provide an understanding of the processes underpinning normal development. This information is useful to connect errors in development to birth defects, and is crucial for the realisation of stem cell-based regenerative therapies.
