Mary Hynes, PhD

Lab Head

Mary Hynes, Stanford University

Mary Hynes has been a leading expert on the development of dopaminergic neurons, critical nerve cells whose degeneration causes the symptoms of Parkinson’s disease. Early on she pioneered work demonstrating that two intersecting molecules Sonic Hedgehog, and FGF8 are necessary to drive neural progenitors to a dopaminergic cell fate. This work still stands as these molecules are routinely used to induce embryonic and induced pluripotent stem cells to adopt a dopaminergic cell fate. She was also involved in early studies demonstrating a biological role for alpha synuclein, as well as documenting the efficacy of a number of neurotrophic molecules on dopaminergic neuron viability.

More recently she has focused on her laboratory’s surprising finding that mRNAs can independently express either their CDS or their 3’UTR, switching expression from one to another in a regulated fashion, often during development or during cellular transition periods such as cancer and metastasis. This work reveals an additional, and previously unrecognized level of complexity in gene expression. Her laboratory is currently focused on understanding the role of “isolated” 3’UTRs and CDS mRNA components, expressed independently of their cognate coding region in both early development, and in cancer.