Didier Stainier

One of the most intriguing questions in biology today is how organs are formed during development. Defining the molecular pathways underlying organogenesis in vertebrates will undoubtedly provide a basis for understanding developmental diseases and may ultimately facilitate tissue regeneration. Zebrafish has emerged as an ideal model for the study of organ development due to the transparent nature of its fast developing embryo and clear similarities with human organ development.

Dr. Stainier is a leader in the field of organogenesis. His groundbreaking work in zebrafish has led to the identification of several molecular pathways critical for heart formation. In addition, his findings have begun to unravel previously uncharacterized pathways responsible for blood vessel, liver, pancreas, and gut formation - further demonstrating the utility of zebrafish as an excellent model for dissecting developmental pathways.

As a graduate student with Wally Gilbert at Harvard University, Stainier first became familiar with the zebrafish system in 1987 and immediately realized the potential of this organism for large-scale approaches including forward genetics. As a postdoctoral fellow with Mark Fishman at Massachusetts General Hospital, he joined forces with Wolfgang Driever and his laboratory to carry out large-scale screens for genes regulating zebrafish embryonic development and identified hundreds of loci, including dozens regulating cardiovascular development. Moving to UCSF in 1995 to set up his own laboratory, Stainier first elected to focus his efforts on the initial assembly of the heart tube, specifically on a set of genes that regulate the migration of the precardiac mesoderm to the midline. Several of these genes affect endoderm formation thereby revealing the importance of the endoderm in heart formation. Since that time, Stainier's laboratory has expanded its research interests to include endodermal organs.