Catherine Dulac

Catherine Gisèle Dulac[4]
Born (1963-02-11) February 11, 1963 (age 61)[5]
France[6]
EducationÉcole Normale Supérieure (BSc)
Institut d'Embryologie cellulaire et moléculaire (Institute of Cellular and Molecular Embryology) (PhD)
Pierre and Marie Curie University(PhD)[1][7]
Known forMammalian pheromones
Parental brain regulation
Research in neuroscience of sex differences
Genomic imprinting
AwardsRichard Lounsbery Award
Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences
Scientific career
FieldsMolecular biology
Neuroscience
InstitutionsColumbia University
Harvard University
Howard Hughes Medical Institute[1]
ThesisEtude de la differenciation des cellules gliales dans le systeme nerveux peripherique (Molecular and cellular study of glial cell differentiation in the peripheral nervous system) (1991)
Doctoral advisorNicole Marthe Le Douarin[2]
Other academic advisorsRichard Axel[3]

Catherine Dulac is a French–American molecular biologist and neuroscientist. She is a professor at the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology of Harvard University and, since 2022,[8] has been the current Samuel W. Morris University Professor.[9] Prior to her appointment as University Professor, she was the Higgins Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology (from 2006)[1] and the Lee and Ezpeleta Professor of Arts and Sciences (from 2018)[10] in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University.

Early life and education

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Dulac grew up in Montpellier, France. Her parents were academics and researchers in the humanities. [11] She entered the École Normale Supérieure in 1982,[12] graduating with a BSc 4 years later.[1]

She then conducted her PhD research under Nicole Marthe Le Douarin at the Institut d'Embryologie cellulaire et moléculaire (Institute of Cellular and Molecular Embryology) in Nogent-sur-Marne,[1] which was affiliated to both Collège de France and the French National Centre for Scientific Research,[13] and defended her PhD thesis at the Pierre and Marie Curie University in Paris in 1991.[7] She stayed at the Institut d'Embryologie cellulaire et moléculaire until 1992.[1]

Career

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After her PhD, in 1993, Dulac went to Columbia University as a postdoctoral fellow in Richard Axel's group. One of the reasons for moving to the United States despite not speaking English was her desire to work on mice, which was a model organism, unlike chicken embryos that she had been working on.[2][11]

In 1996, Dulac joined the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology of Harvard University as an assistant professor,[1][14] She was promoted to associate professor in 2000 and then full professor in 2001.[1] She was the department chair between 2007 and 2013.[15]

Dulac was appointed Higgins Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology in 2006[1] and then Lee and Ezpeleta Professor of Arts and Sciences, a five-year position, in 2018.[16] In 2022, she was conferred the highest honor for a Harvard academic staff, having been named one of the University Professors, the Samuel W. Morris University Professor.[17][18] She is also currently a member of the Harvard Brain Science Initiative, as well as the Center for Brain Science and the affiliated Hock E. Tan and K. Lisa Yang Center for Autism Research at Harvard.

Dulac has been an investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute since 1997.[19]

Research

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Dulac's research spans from olfactory signalling in mammals through pheromones to the neuroscience of sex differences and parental behaviors.[20]

In 1995, working on mice, Dulac became the first to identify genes in mammals that encodes receptors for pheromones.[21] These receptors are termed vomeronasal receptors for their presence in a special structure of the nose called the vomeronasal organ (VNO). She continued researching the signalling pathway of pheromone in mice, discovering that Trpc2, an ion channel only found in the VNO in mice, played a major role in passing pheromone signals to downstream players in the pheromone signalling pathway.[22]

Her group later confirmed the central role Trpc2 plays in mice, showing male mice lacking Trpc2 could not distinguish male mice from female mice,[23] and that female mice lacking Trpc2 sexually behaved more like males.[24] In humans, however, this gene is a pseudogene and is non-functional,[25] which partly explains why humans have a less functional pheromone signalling system.[26]

Apart from pheromones, Dulac has also studied the regulation of the parental brain, reporting that a group of neurons which express galanin regulates parental responses in mice.[27]

More recently, Dulac began studying a region of the amygdala (known as medial amygdala) and its role in regulating sex-specific behaviors,[28] and entered the field of epigenetics,[29] for example profiling genomic imprinting in mice.[30]

Awards and honors

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References

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  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i "Catherine Dulac" (PDF) (in French). French Academy of Sciences. Archived from the original (PDF) on February 6, 2024. Retrieved February 6, 2024.
  2. ^ a b "CATHERINE DULAC'S PHENOMENAL PHEROMONE FASCINATION". Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology, Harvard University. August 6, 2007. Archived from the original on February 7, 2024. Retrieved February 7, 2024.
  3. ^ "Catherine Dulac". Harvard Magazine. No. September-October 2005. 2005. Archived from the original on February 8, 2024. Retrieved February 8, 2024.
  4. ^ a b "Décret du 13 juillet 2022 portant promotion et nomination dans l'ordre national de la Légion d'honneur". Journal officiel de la République française. No. 162. July 14, 2022. Archived from the original on March 10, 2024. Retrieved March 10, 2024.
  5. ^ "Les Membres de l'Académie des sciences élus en 2007" (PDF) (in French). French Academy of Sciences. Archived from the original (PDF) on February 6, 2024. Retrieved February 6, 2024.
  6. ^ "Harvard scientist Catherine Dulac awarded for work on parenting instinct". Radio France Internationale. September 14, 2020. Archived from the original on February 8, 2024. Retrieved February 8, 2024.
  7. ^ a b Etude de la differenciation des cellules gliales dans le systeme nerveux peripherique (Thesis). Theses.fr. January 1991. Archived from the original on February 8, 2024. Retrieved February 8, 2024.
  8. ^ "Dulac, Sampson, and Sharpe honored with highest distinction for a faculty member". The Harvard Gazette. November 28, 2022. Archived from the original on February 7, 2024. Retrieved February 7, 2024.
  9. ^ "Catherine Dulac". Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology, Harvard University. Archived from the original on February 6, 2024. Retrieved February 6, 2024.
  10. ^ Li, Katelyn X. (April 19, 2018). "Four Harvard Faculty Awarded Arts and Sciences Professorships". The Harvard Crimson. Archived from the original on February 14, 2024. Retrieved February 14, 2024.
  11. ^ a b Gitschier, Jane (2011). "Vive La Différence: An Interview with Catherine Dulac". PLOS Genetics. 7 (6): e1002140. doi:10.1371/journal.pgen.1002140. PMC 3121755. PMID 21731502.
  12. ^ "Entretien avec la neurobiologiste Catherine Dulac" (in French). École Normale Supérieure. Archived from the original on February 14, 2024. Retrieved February 14, 2024.
  13. ^ Le Douarin, Nicole (2005). "The Nogent Institute - 50 Years of Embryology". The International Journal of Developmental Biology. 49 (2–3): 85–103. doi:10.1387/ijdb.041952nl. PMID 15906221. Archived from the original on February 15, 2024. Retrieved February 15, 2024.
  14. ^ "Molecular and neural architecture of circuits underlying social behavior in the mouse". Simons Foundation. October 28, 2015. Archived from the original on February 15, 2024. Retrieved February 15, 2024.
  15. ^ Jennings, Charles. "McGovern Institute awards 2017 Scolnick Prize to Catherine Dulac". MIT News. Archived from the original on February 9, 2024. Retrieved February 9, 2024.
  16. ^ Simon, Clea (May 23, 2019). "Giving to the next generation". The Harvard Gazette. Archived from the original on February 18, 2024. Retrieved February 18, 2024.
  17. ^ "Three New University Professors". Harvard Magazine. November 30, 2022. Archived from the original on February 18, 2024. Retrieved February 18, 2024.
  18. ^ Kim, Ariel H.; Xu, Meimei (November 30, 2022). "Three Harvard Scholars Named University Professors, Highest Faculty Distinction". The Harvard Crimson. Archived from the original on February 18, 2024. Retrieved February 18, 2024.
  19. ^ "Catherine Dulac, PhD". Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Archived from the original on February 20, 2024. Retrieved February 20, 2024.
  20. ^ "Research". Harvard University. Archived from the original on May 10, 2024. Retrieved May 10, 2024.
  21. ^ Dulac, Catherine; Axel, Richard (1995). "A novel family of genes encoding putative pheromone receptors in mammals". Cell. 83 (2): 195–206. doi:10.1016/0092-8674(95)90161-2. PMID 7585937. Archived from the original on June 24, 2024. Retrieved June 24, 2024.
  22. ^ Liman, Emily R.; Corey, David P.; Dulac, Catherine (1999). "TRP2: A candidate transduction channel for mammalian pheromone sensory signaling". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 96 (10): 5791–5796. Bibcode:1999PNAS...96.5791L. doi:10.1073/pnas.96.10.5791. PMC 21939. PMID 10318963.
  23. ^ Stowers, Lisa; Holy, Timothy E.; Meister, Markus; Dulac, Catherine; Koentges, Georgy (2002). "Loss of Sex Discrimination and Male-Male Aggression in Mice Deficient for TRP2". Science. 295 (5559): 1493–1500. Bibcode:2002Sci...295.1493S. doi:10.1126/science.1069259. PMID 11823606. Retrieved June 24, 2024.
  24. ^ Kimchi, Tali; Xu, Jennings; Dulac, Catherine (2007). "A functional circuit underlying male sexual behaviour in the female mouse brain". Nature. 448 (7157): 1009–1014. Bibcode:2007Natur.448.1009K. doi:10.1038/nature06089. PMID 17676034. Retrieved June 24, 2024.
  25. ^ "TRPC2 transient receptor potential cation channel subfamily C member 2 (pseudogene) [Homo sapiens (human)]". National Center for Biotechnology Information. Archived from the original on June 24, 2024. Retrieved June 24, 2024.
  26. ^ Dulac, Catherine; Torello, A. Thomas (2003). "Molecular detection of pheromone signals in mammals: from genes to behaviour". Nature Reviews Neuroscience. 4 (7): 551–562. doi:10.1038/nrn1140. PMID 12838330. Retrieved June 24, 2024.
  27. ^ Wu, Zheng; Autry, Anita E.; Bergan, Joseph F.; Watabe-Uchida, Mitsuko; Dulac, Catherine G. (2014). "Galanin neurons in the medial preoptic area govern parental behaviour". Nature. 509 (7500): 325–330. Bibcode:2014Natur.509..325W. doi:10.1038/nature13307. PMC 4105201. PMID 24828191.
  28. ^ Bergan, Joseph F.; Ben-Shaul, Yoram; Dulac, Catherine (2014). "Sex-specific processing of social cues in the medial amygdala". eLife. 3: e02743. doi:10.7554/eLife.02743. PMC 4038839. PMID 24894465.
  29. ^ Perez, Julio D.; Rubinstein, Nimrod D.; Dulac, Catherine (2016). "New Perspectives on Genomic Imprinting, an Essential and Multifaceted Mode of Epigenetic Control in the Developing and Adult Brain". Annual Review of Neuroscience. 39: 347–384. doi:10.1146/annurev-neuro-061010-113708. PMC 5125552. PMID 27145912.
  30. ^ Gregg, Christopher; Zhang, Jiangwen; Weissbourd, Brandon; Luo, Shujun; Schroth, Gary P.; Haig, David; Dulac, Catherine (2010). "High-Resolution Analysis of Parent-of-Origin Allelic Expression in the Mouse Brain". Science. 329 (5992): 643–648. Bibcode:2010Sci...329..643G. doi:10.1126/science.1190830. PMC 3005244. PMID 20616232.
  31. ^ "ETHAN GARNER CHOSEN AS SEARLE SCHOLAR". Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology, Harvard University. April 1, 2013. Archived from the original on February 20, 2024. Retrieved February 20, 2024.
  32. ^ "Catherine G. Dulac". American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Archived from the original on February 20, 2024. Retrieved February 20, 2024.
  33. ^ "Richard Lounsbery Award". National Academy of Sciences. Archived from the original on February 20, 2024. Retrieved February 20, 2024.
  34. ^ "Catherine Dulac" (in French). French Academy of Sciences. Archived from the original on February 23, 2024. Retrieved February 23, 2024.
  35. ^ "The Perl-UNC Neuroscience Prize Previous Recipients". French Academy of Sciences. Archived from the original on February 23, 2024. Retrieved February 23, 2024.
  36. ^ "Décret du 22 avril 2011 portant promotion et nomination". Journal officiel de la République française. No. 97. April 22, 2011. Archived from the original on March 10, 2024. Retrieved March 10, 2024.
  37. ^ "Catherine Dulac". National Academy of Sciences. Archived from the original on February 23, 2024. Retrieved February 23, 2024.
  38. ^ "Edward M. Scolnick Prize in Neuroscience". McGovern Institute for Brain Research. Archived from the original on February 23, 2024. Retrieved February 23, 2024.
  39. ^ "Karl Spencer Lashley Award". American Philosophical Society. Archived from the original on February 23, 2024. Retrieved February 23, 2024.
  40. ^ "Dr. Catherine Dulac". American Philosophical Society. Archived from the original on May 11, 2024. Retrieved May 11, 2024.
  41. ^ "Society for Neuroscience Presents Ralph W. Gerard Prize in Neuroscience". Society for Neuroscience. October 19, 2019. Archived from the original on May 10, 2024. Retrieved May 10, 2024.
  42. ^ "Ralph W. Gerard Prize". Society for Neuroscience. Archived from the original on May 10, 2024. Retrieved May 10, 2024.
  43. ^ "Catherine Dulac". Breakthrough Prize. Archived from the original on May 10, 2024. Retrieved May 11, 2024.
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