Abstract: I will discuss how we combine forward and reverse genetic approaches in zebrafish to understand early inductive and morphogenetic processes shaping embryonic axes, but also to generate disease models and uncover the functions of genes or variants of unknown significance for scoliosis and in our efforts for the Undiagnosed Diseases Network.

Biography: Lilianna (Lila) Solnica-Krezel, Ph.D., was raised in Poland and completed her undergraduate education and M.S. in molecular biology at the University of Warsaw. She obtained her Ph.D. at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, WI. She carried out her postdoctoral work at Harvard Medical School in Boston. In 1996, she established her independent laboratory focusing on zebrafish embryogenesis at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, where she became Martha Rivers Ingram Professor of Developmental Genetics and University Professor. Since 2010, Solnica-Krezel has been the Professor and Head of the Department of Developmental Biology and co-directors of the Center of Regenerative Medicine at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. She is a co-Head of Developmental Biology Section of Faculty of 1000.

Solnica-Krezel lab is using zebrafish and human embryonic stem cells to investigate how inductive and morphogenetic processes are coordinated during vertebrate embryogenesis. She is one of the pioneers of the zebrafish model, having established methods for efficient germline mutagenesis and coordinating a genome-wide screen for embryonic lethal mutations. As an independent investigator, Dr. Solnica-Krezel made key advances in understanding the inductive and morphogenetic processes that sculpt the vertebrate body plan and how these processes are coordinated. Solnica-Krezel implicated the Planar Cell Polarity pathway as a molecular compass that links anteroposterior embryonic polarity to cell behaviors driving axis elongation, and showed that BMP morphogen gradient also instructs gastrulation movements that narrow and elongate embryonic axis. Her lab is deploying forward and advanced reverse genetic approaches to generate disease models and uncover the functions of genes or variants of unknown significance for such diseases as holoprosencephaly, or scoliosis and leading the efforts of the Washington University Zebrafish Model Organism Screening Center for the NIH supported Undiagnosed Diseases Network. She is a Fellow of the American Association for Advancement of Science (AAAS) and recipient of 2019 Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard Award from the European Zebrafish Society. In 2018/2019 Lila served as the President of the Society for Developmental Biology, and in 2021/2022 as the President of the International Zebrafish Society.