Submitted by Christine Alexander on Tue, 03/12/2013 - 14:13
Congratulations to Mary Cleaton, a PhD student in the Ferguson-Smith lab, for being awarded the Mammalian Genome Prize at the Mammalian Genetics and Development Workshop held on 21st November 2013 at the Institute of Child Health in London.
Mary’s presentation was entitled ‘Investigating the source and function of maternal Delta-like homologue 1 (DLK1) in pregnancy’. Her research, using mouse genetic models, sets out to explain why there is a dramatic surge in circulatory DLK1 levels in maternal serum during gestation. She showed that DLK1 is secreted from the conceptus and that this atypical Notch ligand provides information about foetal well-being in addition to signalling to the mother to regulate the partitioning of nutrient resources between herself and her foetus.