Clocks & Rhythms with Olivier Pourquie interviewed by Jan Witkowski

Olivier Pourquié, Ph.D. is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator at the Stowers Institute for Medical... » More

Olivier Pourquié, Ph.D. is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator at the Stowers Institute for Medical Research in Kansas City, Missouri. Dr. Pourquié received his diploma in general microbiology from the Institut Pasteur in Paris and in agronomic engineering from the Institut National Agronomique Paris-Grignon. He completed his Ph.D. and postdoctoral work in Developmental Biology with Pr Nicole Le Douarin at the Institut d’Embryologie du College de France at Nogent sur Marne (France). Dr. Pourquié was Director of Research at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) in Marseille, France, before relocating his laboratory in 2002 to the Stowers Institute for Medical Research.

The segmental pattern of the human spine is established early in development when the vertebral precursors, the somites, are rhythmically produced from the presomitic mesoderm. Dr Pourquié provided the first evidence of the existence of a molecular oscillator (the segmentation clock) and its involvement in the formation of the segmented structures of the vertebrate body axis. The Nature Publishing Group acknowledged his discovery of the segmentation clock as one of 24 milestones in developmental biology over the past 100 years. His current research focuses on the segmentation clock and the molecular processes that underlie somite formation in vertebrates during embryonic development.

Dr. Pourquié served as president of the French Society for Developmental Biology and is an elected member of the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO). He is an Associate Editor for Developmental Biology and serves on the editorial boards of Development, Mechanisms of Development, Bioessays, Developmental Biology and Developmental Dynamics. His awards include the Science Prize of the Gulbenkian Foundation, Portugal; the Victor Noury Grand Prize from the French Academy of Sciences; the Edouard Van Beneden Prize from the Royal Academy of Belgium; and the Harland Winfield Mossman Award in Developmental Biology from the American Association of Anatomists
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