Helen McNeill, PhD

Professor of Developmental Biology

Washington University in St. Louis (WU)

The lab has two areas of focus. 1) Coordination of tissue growth and tissue organization during development. We use multiple model systems to understand growth control by Fat cadherins and the Hippo pathway. 2) Germ cell development. We focus on a novel family of transmembrane proteins called Nuclear Envelope Membrane Proteins (NEMP). Our studies have shown that loss of NEMP family members leads to loss of fertility in Drosophila, C. elegans, zebrafish and mouse models. We are currently investigating the role of NEMP1 in mammalian fertility and in the development of human oocytes and acquisition of competence for embryonic development.