Didier Stainier

Scientific career

Didier Stainier studied biology in Wales (United World College of the Atlantic), Belgium (University of Liège) and the USA (Brandeis University) where he got a BA in 1984. He has a PhD in biochemistry and biophysics from Harvard University (1990). During his PhD work, he investigated axon guidance and target recognition in the developing mouse with Walter Gilbert. Subsequently, he initiated the studies on zebrafish cardiac development as a Helen Hay Whitney postdoctoral fellow with Mark Fishman at the Massachusetts General Hospital (Boston).

Scientific interests

Together with the many students and postdocs in his laboratory, Stainier helped pioneer the use of the zebrafish model to study a wide range of questions pertaining to vertebrate organ development and function, and has published extensively. His forward genetic analyses of heart development revealed the unexpected role of several signaling pathways including sphingosine 1-phosphate signaling and the discovery of the long-elusive sphingosine 1-phosphate transporter. Additional genetic screens led to the elucidation of transcriptional networks regulating endoderm formation and endothelial cell specification as well as extracellular signals regulating liver induction. He pushed the frontiers of in vivo microscopy to reveal new insights into cardiac valve formation and cardiac trabeculation, and used cellular approaches to gain a detailed understanding of these processes. Stainier developed and used single-cell analyses to provide the first in vivo demonstration of the hemangioblast, a formerly hypothetical cell that gives rise to both endothelial and blood cells, as well as the discovery of a new mode of blood vessel formation. His studies on gut looping morphogenesis revealed the importance of tissue-level physical forces in shaping organs, and his studies on gut lumen formation revealed the importance of fluid flow in this process. He developed a number of cell ablation models that allowed him and others to gain new insights into the process of organ regeneration, with potential implications for novel disease therapies. Most recently, he has also made significant contributions to the understanding of genetic compensation.