Year: 2021
Type: article
Abstract: Kim Cooper has been a Pew Biomedical Scholar, a Searle Scholar, and a Packard Fellow in Science and Engineering. She also received a NSF CAREER Award and a Pan-American Society for Evolutionary Developmental Biology Early Career Award. With whom and where did you study? I completed my Bachelor of Science at Cornell University where I worked with Dr. Ross MacIntyre in Drosophila genetics. Following his encouragement, I completed my PhD in the MCB program at the University of Washington and Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center where I studied zebrafish hindbrain development with Dr. Cecilia Moens. My evo–devo interests grew in graduate school, and I completed my postdoctoral fellowship in the evolution of limb development with Dr. Cliff Tabin at Harvard Medical School. What got you interested in Biology? When did you know EvoDevo was for you? I grew up in very rural Texas, and my mom quickly learned to not open containers with holes poked in the lid. We all learned that baby praying mantises are smaller than the diameter of an ice pick when they hatched and got loose in the house. The courses I most enjoyed in college were genetics and developmental biology, and I joined my graduate lab because of the ability to watch green fluorescent neurons develop in live fish and to do forward genetics in a vertebrate. But I think a major moment that drove me to merge developmental genetics and species diversity is when a referee of my first graduate paper wrote something like “If this is true in a mouse, you should study it in a mouse. If it's not true in a mouse, then it's fish specific and uninteresting.” And now I'm proudly an Associate Editor of JEZ-B in a role to promote work that highlights the interesting differences between species. Who was your most influential mentor? More people have provided formal and informal advice and support over the years than I can ever possibly name, and I thank those who are reading this. Among these, Cliff Tabin has had the most influence to inspire my creativity and foster my courage to tackle interesting and challenging questions. He's also been an excellent example of how to support those I'm privileged to train, not only as scientists but also as whole humans. How have you seen EvoDevo change since you started your career? At the start of my postdoc, it seemed EvoDevo was seen as “fringe” and often relegated to a special session at the end of developmental biology meetings. At the Society for Developmental Biology meetings from about 2007–2012, I informally gathered folks working in nontraditional species for a “Weird Critter” lunch so I could connect with and learn from people with similar philosophies. I stopped organizing those lunches when the community quickly grew so that most sessions at each SDB meeting now include non-traditional species, and we have the Pan-American Society for Evolutionary Developmental Biology and meetings to further build this community. What opportunities do you see for EvoDevo groups within general biology and more specialized departments? Institutional leadership is taking notice of our growing field, and current graduate students and postdoctoral fellows should be very optimistic about their future job prospects. During seminar “visits” in recent months, I've spoken with leaders at multiple universities who are excited to establish and grow research programs using a variety of non-traditional species. There is increasing appreciation that all of life is united by the same underlying biology, that mutations occur at random, and that the environment defines what it adaptive and maladaptive. EvoDevo can therefore make major advances not only in evolutionary biology but also in our understanding of fundamental principals of biology and even medicine.
DOI: 10.1002/jez.b.23033
Author: Kimberly L. Cooper
Institution: University of California San Diego
Language: English
Subfield: Molecular Biology
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W3133723026