Edward M. De Robertis

In the 1990s, the laboratory of De Robertis dissected systematically the molecular pathways that mediate embryonic induction. Hans Spemann and Hilde Mangold discovered in 1924 an area of the amphibian embryo that, when transplanted, might promote the creation of Siamese twins. De Robertis identified the genes expressed in Xenopus embryos in this area, beginning with the goosecoid homeobox gene.

In 1984, De Robertis together with his late colleague Walter Gehring's and their laboratories cloned the first vertebrate development-controlling gene, today known as Hox-C6. Hox genes are responsible for anterior-to-posterior (head-to-tail) differentiation. The finding that Hox genes are conserved in both vertebrates and fruit flies heralded the beginning of the nascent scientific field of Evolution and Development, or Evo-Devo.

Edward (also known as Eddy) De Robertis’ postdoctoral training (1974-1977), was with Nobel laureate Sir John Gurdon at the Medical Research Council in Cambridge England.

Edward Michael De Robertis (born June 6, 1947) is an American embryologist and Professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. His work has contributed to the finding of conserved molecular processes of embryonic inductions that result in tissue differentiations during animal development. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2013, worked for the Howard Hughes Medical Institute for 26 years, and holds a Distinguished Professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. In 2009 Pope Benedict XVI appointed De Robertis to a lifetime position in the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, and in 2022 Pope Francis appointed him Councillor of the Academy for four years.

Edward De Robertis was born on June 6, 1947, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, while his father, neurobiologist Eduardo Diego De Robertis, was an MIT postdoctoral fellow. Since the age of three, he was reared in Uruguay, where he received his medical degree at age 24 from the Universidad de la República del Uruguay. This was followed by the completion of a Ph.D. in chemistry at the Leloir Institute in Buenos Aires, Argentina.