Kevin Eggan, Ph.D. - Stowers Medical Institute

Dr. Eggan’s team is interested in how developmental and environmental cues induce heritable variation in chromatin structure and how these variations regulate developmental potency, cell fate, and gene expression.

The development of the fertilized zygote into a complex organism has been traditionally understood as a unidirectional process, with cells in the embryo becoming gradually more committed to a specific tissue type. However, nuclear transfer experiments have demonstrated that the mammalian egg can relieve the constraints imposed by cellular differentiation and return the nucleus of an adult cell to a totipotent embryonic state. This process has been termed nuclear reprogramming. The primary research focus of this group is to understand the mechanisms by which reprogramming occurs. In particular, they wish to determine the nature of epigenetic information that is reprogrammed (i.e., aspects of DNA methylation and chromatin structure), the times at which reprogramming events occur, and the identities of the molecular machinery that accomplish reprogramming.

In addition, Dr. Eggan’s team is using nuclear transfer and other approaches to develop human early stem cell lines that carry the genes responsible for human neurodegenerative disease, in the hope that these cell lines will provide valuable model systems for the in vitro study of these diseases.

Selected publications

Eggan K. Dolly's Legacy: Human Nuclear Transplantation and Better Medicines for Our Children. Cloning Stem Cells. 2007;9:21-25. Abstract

Eggan K, Jurga S, Gosden R, Min IM, Wagers AJ. Ovulated oocytes in adult mice derive from non-circulating germ cells. Nature. 2006;441:1109-1114. Abstract

Rodolfa KT, Eggan K. A Transcriptional Logic for Nuclear Reprogramming. Cell. 2006;126:652-655. Abstract

Yang X, Eggan K, Seidel G, Jr., Jaenisch R, Melton D. A simple system of checks and balances to cut fraud. Nature. 2006;439:782. Abstract

Cowan CA, Atienza J, Melton DA, Eggan K. Nuclear reprogramming of somatic cells after fusion with human embryonic stem cells. Science. 2005;309:1369-1373. Abstract

Eggan K, Baldwin K, Tackett M, Osborne J, Gogos J, Chess A, Axel R, Jaenisch R. Mice cloned from olfactory sensory neurons. Nature. 2004;428:44-49. Abstract

Geijsen N, Horoschak M, Kim K, Gribnau J, Eggan K, Daley GQ. Derivation of embryonic germ cells and male gametes from embryonic stem cells. Nature. 2004;427:148-154. Abstract

Bortvin A, Eggan K, Skaletsky H, Akutsu H, Berry DL, Yanagimachi R, Page DC, Jaenisch R. Incomplete reactivation of Oct4-related genes in mouse embryos cloned from somatic nuclei. Development. 2003;130:1673-1680. Abstract

Eggan K, Rode A, Jentsch I, Samuel C, Hennek T, Tintrup H, Zevnik B, Erwin J, Loring J, Jackson-Grusby L, Speicher MR, Kuehn R, Jaenisch R. Male and female mice derived from the same embryonic stem cell clone by tetraploid embryo complementation. Nat Biotechnol. 2002;20:455-459. Abstract

Humpherys D, Eggan K, Akutsu H, Friedman A, Hochedlinger K, Yanagimachi R, Lander ES, Golub TR, Jaenisch R. Abnormal gene expression in cloned mice derived from embryonic stem cell and cumulus cell nuclei. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2002;99:12889-12894. Abstract

Eggan K, Akutsu H, Loring J, Jackson-Grusby L, Klemm M, Rideout WM, 3rd, Yanagimachi R, Jaenisch R. Hybrid vigor, fetal overgrowth, and viability of mice derived by nuclear cloning and tetraploid embryo complementation. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2001;98:6209-6214. Abstract

Humpherys D, Eggan K, Akutsu H, Hochedlinger K, Rideout WM, 3rd, Biniszkiewicz D, Yanagimachi R, Jaenisch R. Epigenetic instability in ES cells and cloned mice. Science. 2001;293:95-97. Abstract

Eggan K, Akutsu H, Hochedlinger K, Rideout W, 3rd, Yanagimachi R, Jaenisch R. X-Chromosome inactivation in cloned mouse embryos. Science. 2000;290:1578-1581. Abstract