Developmental Molecular Mechanisms

BIOGRAPHY

ACADEMIC POSITION:
Ivor Mason is Professor of Developmental Biology and Assistant Director of the Medical Research Council Centre for Developmental Neurobiology at King's College London.

EDUCATION AND BACKGROUND:
He gained his first degree in zoology at the University of Oxford and a PhD at the Imperial Cancer Research Fund in the laboratory of Brigid Hogan, where he studied the first differentiation events during mouse embryogenesis. In 1986, he took a postdoctoral position with Martin Raff and Anne Mudge at University College London where his interest in developmental neurobiology was first fuelled. He was appointed to a lectureship in molecular embryology in the Division of Anatomy at Guy's Hospital Medical School, London in 1990 and subsequently has remained on the Guy's Hospital Campus, although the Medical School has now merged with that of King's College London. From that time his work has focused upon the role of local signalling events in subdividing and giving regional identity to the developing brain. He has been co-director, with Prof Andrew Lumsden FRS, of the Medical Research Council's Brain Development Programme since 1992.

HONORS AND AWARDS:
In 1998 he was elected Honorary Secretary of the British Society for Developmental Biology, serving in that capacity for the following 5 years, and was awarded a Personal Chair in Developmental Biology by the University of London in 2000. In 2001 he was made a Fellow of the Institute of Biology and was Cornelius Wiersma Visiting Professor at Caltech in 2003.

RESEARCH INTERESTS:
The vertebrate embryo is sculpted largely through a process of persuasion rather than cell autonomy, where the persuasive forces take the form of intercellular signals. The Mason group seeks to identify these instructive cues and understand the mechanisms by which they direct cellular behaviours. We focus primarily upon how signalling processes direct development of the brain; how they are deployed to impart regional identity, cell fate, control proliferation and to direct morphogenetic movements and guide axons to their targets. Our recent work has established that the same signal from the same source may serve to instruct several of these processes either simultaneously or sequentially. Moreover, we have found that the same signalling centre may serve to direct the development of tissues adjacent to the brain, thereby coordinating head development both spatially and temporally. We make use of three vertebrate model organisms in our work, zebrafish, chick and mouse, according to which is best-suited to address any particular question and we also utilise organ, explant and tissue culture approaches.