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Alexander F. Schier

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Alexander F. Schier
Alex Schier, 2008
Born
Switzerland
CitizenshipSwitzerland, USA
Alma materUniversity of Basel (1988)
Known forResearch with zebrafish (Danio rerio)
Embryogenesis
Sleep
AwardsMcKnight Scholar for Neuroscience (1999-2002)
Irma T. Hirschl Scholar (2001-2005)
Investigator of the American Heart Association (2002-2005)
HW Mossman Award of the American Asc. of Anatomists (2006)
McKnight Neuroscience of Brain Disorders Award (2006-2008)
Everett Mendelsohn Excellence in Mentoring Award (2014)
Scientific career
FieldsCell Biology
Development
Genetics
Neurobiology
Behavior
InstitutionsUniversity of Basel (Switzerland)
Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston (USA)
Skirball Institute, NYU School of Medicine (USA)
Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology, Harvard University (USA)
Doctoral advisorWalter J. Gehring
Other academic advisorsWolfgang Driever

Alexander F. Schier (born 1964) is the Leo Erikson Life Sciences Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology and chair of the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University. He is a member of the Center for Brain Science, a member of the Center for Systems Biology, a principal member of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute, and an associate member of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard.

Schier received a B.A. in Cell Biology in 1988 from the University of Basel, Switzerland, followed by a PhD in Cell Biology in 1992 under Walter J. Gehring, also from the University of Basel, Switzerland. He conducted his postdoctoral research in Wolfgang Driever’s lab at the Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard University in Boston, USA. In 1996, Schier was recruited as Assistant Professor in the Developmental Genetics Program to the Skirball Institute and Department of Cell Biology, NYU School of Medicine. Since 2005, he is Professor at the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology, Harvard University, Faculty of Arts and Sciences.

Research

Schier is internationally recognized for his pioneering work on vertebrate development using zebrafish (Danio rerio) as a model organism. During his postdoctoral work, Schier and colleagues performed one of the first large-scale forward genetic screens in a vertebrate.[1][2]

In his own lab, Schier has made fundamental advances to the understanding of the molecular basis of vertebrate embryogenesis, including signaling,[3][4][5][6][7][8][9] cell fate determination,[4][5][10][11] cell movement,[9] the maternal-zygotic transition,[12][13] microRNAs,[7][12][14] chromatin,[15] and non-coding RNAs.[16] Schier’s more recent interest in behavior has established zebrafish as a model for sleep[17][18] and behavioral[19] research, determined neural circuits that underlie sleep[17] and identified small molecule sleep regulators.[18]

He has contributed to the development of zebrafish as model system, including positional cloning,[3] germ-line replacement to generate maternal-effect mutants;[20] photobleaching and photo conversion;[8] Brainbow imaging;[11] small molecule profiling;[18] transcriptomics[16] and epigenomics;[15] gene annotation;[9][16][21] and CRISPR/Cas9 genome editing.[22]

Mentoring

Schier is also well known for having an unusually high rate of placing trainees in academic positions. Key to his training philosophy are five questions he has developed to sharpen the thoughts of his mentees (see also [23]):

  • Do you work on an important problem?
  • Do you work with sustained concentration?
  • Do you have a sense of urgency?
  • Are you able to troubleshoot?
  • Do you have the killer instinct to do the key experiments that will result in a coherent, conclusive and publishable study?

Awards

  • 1999-2002 McKnight Scholar for Neuroscience
  • 2001-2005 Irma T. Hirschl Scholar
  • 2002-2005 Established Investigator of the American Heart Association
  • 2006 Harland Winfield Mossman Developmental Biologists Award of the American Asc. of Anatomists
  • 2006-2008 McKnight Neuroscience of Brain Disorders Award
  • 2014 Everett Mendelsohn Excellence in Mentoring Award from Harvard’s Graduate Student Council

References

  1. ^ Schier, A.F., Neuhauss, S. C. F., Harvey, M., Malicki, J., Solnica-Krezel, L., Stainier, D. Y. R., Zwartkruis, F., Abdelilah, S., Stemple, D. L., Rangini, Z., Yang, H. and Driever, W. (1996). Mutations affecting the development of the embryonic zebrafish brain. Development 123, 165 - 178
  2. ^ Schier, A. F., Neuhauss, S. C., Helde, K. A., Talbot, W. S., & Driever, W. (1997). The one-eyed pinhead gene functions in mesoderm and endoderm formation in zebrafish and interacts with no tail. Development, 124(2), 327–342.
  3. ^ a b Zhang, J., Talbot, W.S., and Schier, A.F. (1998). Positional cloning identifies zebrafish one-eyed pinhead as a permissive EGF-related ligand required during gastrulation. Cell 92, 241-251.
  4. ^ a b Gritsman, K., Zhang, J., Cheng, S., Heckscher, E., Talbot, W.S., and Schier, A.F. (1999). The EGF-CFC protein one-eyed pinhead is essential for nodal signaling. Cell 97, 121-132.
  5. ^ a b Chen, Y. and Schier, A.F. (2001). The zebrafish nodal signal squint functions as a morphogen. Nature 411, 607-610.
  6. ^ Ciruna, B., Jenny, A., Lee, D., Mlodzik, M. and Schier, A.F. (2006). Planar cell polarity signalling couples cell division and morphogenesis during neurulation. Nature 439, 220-224.
  7. ^ a b Choi, W.-Y., Giraldez, A.J. and Schier, A.F. (2007). Target Protectors reveal dampening and balancing of Nodal agonist and antagonist by miR-430. Science 318, 271-274.
  8. ^ a b Mueller, P. Rogers, K.W., Jordan, B.M.; Lee, J.S., Robson, D., Ramanathan, S., and Schier A.F. (2012). Differential diffusivity of Nodal and Lefty underlies a reaction-diffusion patterning system. Science 336, 721-4.
  9. ^ a b c Pauli, A., Norris, M.L., Valen, E., Chew, G.-L., Gagnon, J.A., Zimmerman, S., Mitchell, A., Ma, J., Dubrulle, J., Reyon, D., Tsai, S.Q., Joung, J.K., Saghatelian, A., and Schier, A.F. (2014). Toddler: an embryonic signal that promotes cell movement via Apelin receptors. Science 343, 1248636
  10. ^ Huang, P., Xiong, F., Megason, S. G., & Schier, A. F. (2012). Attenuation of Notch and Hedgehog signaling is required for fate specification in the spinal cord. PLoS Genetics, 8(6), e1002762. doi:10.1371/journal.pgen.1002762
  11. ^ a b Pan YA, Freundlich T, Weissman TA, Schoppik D, Wang XC, Zimmerman S, Ciruna B, Sanes JR, Lichtman JW, Schier AF (2013). Zebrabow: multispectral cell labeling for cell tracing and lineage analysis in zebrafish. Development, 140(13), 2835–2846. doi:10.1242/dev.094631
  12. ^ a b Giraldez, A.J., Mishima, Y., Rihel, J., Grocock, R.J., Van Dongen, S., Inoue, K., Enright, A.J. and Schier, A.F. (2006). Zebrafish miR-430 promotes deadenylation and clearance of maternal mRNAs. Science 312, 75-79.
  13. ^ Schier AF (2007). "The Maternal-Zygotic Transition: Death and Birth of RNAs". Science 316 (5823): 406–7.
  14. ^ Giraldez, A.J., Cinalli, R. Glasner, M.E., Enright, A., Thomson, J.M., Baskerville, S., Hammond, S.M., Bartel, D. and Schier, A.F. (2005). MicroRNAs regulate brain morphogenesis in zebrafish. Science 308, 833-838.
  15. ^ a b Vastenhouw, N.L., Zhang, Y., Woods, I.G., Imam, F., Regev, A., Liu, X.S., Rinn, J., and Schier, A.F. (2010). Chromatin signature of embryonic pluripotency is established during genome activation. Nature 464, 922-6. PMCID: PMC2874748.
  16. ^ a b c Pauli, A., Valen, E., Lin, M.F., Garber, M., Vastenhouw, N.L., Levin, J.Z., Fan, L., Sandelin, A., Rinn, J.L., Regev, A., and Schier, A.F. (2012). Systematic identification of long noncoding RNAs expressed during zebrafish embryogenesis. Genome Research 22, 577-91. Epub 2011 Nov 22.
  17. ^ a b Prober, D. A., Rihel, J., Onah, A. A., Sung, R.-J., & Schier, A. F. (2006). Hypocretin/orexin overexpression induces an insomnia-like phenotype in zebrafish. Journal of Neuroscience, 26(51), 13400–13410. doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.4332-06.2006
  18. ^ a b c Rihel, J., Prober, D., Arvanites, A., Lam, K., Zimmerman, S., Jang, S., Haggarty, S.J., Kokel, D., Rubin, L.L., Peterson, R.T. and Schier, A.F. (2010). Behavioral profiling links drugs to biological targets and the regulation of rest/wake states. Science 15, 348-51. PMCID: PMC2830481
  19. ^ Woods IG, Schoppik D, Shi VJ, Zimmerman S, Coleman HA, Greenwood J, Soucy ER, Schier AF (2014). Neuropeptidergic signaling partitions arousal behaviors in zebrafish. Journal of Neuroscience, 34(9), 3142–3160. doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.3529-13.2014
  20. ^ Ciruna, B., Weidinger, G., Knaut, H., Thisse, B., Thisse, C., Raz, E., & Schier, A. F. (2002). Production of maternal-zygotic mutant zebrafish by germ-line replacement. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 99(23), 14919–14924. doi:10.1073/pnas.222459999
  21. ^ Chew, G.-L., Pauli, A., Rinn, J. L., Regev, A., Schier, A. F., & Valen, E. (2013). Ribosome profiling reveals resemblance between long non-coding RNAs and 5' leaders of coding RNAs. Development, 140(13), 2828–2834. doi:10.1242/dev.098343
  22. ^ Gagnon JA, Valen E, Thyme SB, Huang P, Ahkmetova L, Pauli A, Montague TG, Zimmerman S, Richter C, Schier AF (2014). Efficient Mutagenesis by Cas9 Protein-Mediated Oligonucleotide Insertion and Large-Scale Assessment of Single-Guide RNAs. PLoS ONE, 9(5), e98186. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0098186
  23. ^ http://www.cell.com/current-biology/pdf/S0960-9822(04)00437-3.pdf
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