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NYU School of Medicine Scientist is Elected a Member of the National Academy of Sciences

MAY 5, 2005 - Ruth Lehmann, Ph.D., the Julius Raynes Professor of Developmental Genetics at the Skirball Institute of Biomolecular Medicine at New York University School of Medicine and an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, has been elected a foreign associate member of the National Academy of Sciences. Election to the NAS is widely considered one of the highest accolades that can be accorded to a scientist or engineer. 

Dr. Lehmann, a leader in the field of developmental genetics, is also Director of the new Helen L. & Martin S. Kimmel Center for Stem Cell Biology and Director of the Developmental Genetics Program at the Sackler Institute of Graduate Biomedical Sciences at the School of Medicine.

Dr. Lehmann is widely known for her pioneering work on germ cells, which give rise to egg and sperm, during early development of the embryo. By studying aberrant development of mutant germ cell lines in the fruit fly, her research has laid the foundation for understanding the potential causes of testicular germ-line cancers and sterility.

Dr. Lehmann received her Ph.D. from the University of Tubingen, Germany, in 1985. At the university she worked with Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard, Ph.D., the future Nobel Laureate, who was studying genes that influence early embryonic development in the fruit fly.  Dr. Lehmann made important contributions to these studies, including the discovery of a gene that is responsible for assembling Drosophila germ plasm and for determining the embryo's anterior-posterior axis. 

In 1988 Dr. Lehmann moved to the Cambridge, Mass., where she joined the Whitehead Institute at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. At MIT she continued her research on the molecular genetics and biochemistry of development. In 1996, she joined NYU School of Medicine's Skirball Institute of Biomolecular Medicine, where she and Alexandra Joyner, Ph.D., Professor of Cell Biology and Physiology and Neuroscience, coordinate the research program in developmental genetics.

Today, Dr. Lehmann's laboratory, which includes 19 post-docs, graduate students, and research technicians, is analyzing genes with colorful names such as egalitarian, nanos, pumilio, zero population growth, and slow as molasses. Each of these genes controls a particular aspect of germ cell behavior. Human counterparts to nanos and pumilio are present in germ cells; thus Dr. Lehmann's research may provide answers about human reproduction and about the mechanisms that are involved when human growth and development go awry. It is hoped that this knowledge will lead to research into therapies to correct or prevent those malfunctions.

There are now four members of the School of Medicine faculty who are members of the NAS. In addition to Dr. Lehmann, the members are: Dan R. Littman, M.D., Ph.D., the Helen L. and Martin S. Kimmel Professor of Molecular Immunology; Rodolfo Llinas, M.D., Ph.D., the Thomas and Suzanne Murphy Professor of Neuroscience and Chairman of the Department of Physiology and Neuroscience; and David D. Sabatini, M.D., Ph.D., the Frederick L. Ehrman Professor of Cell Biology and Chairman of the Department of Cell Biology.

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