Nicole Marthe Le Douarin facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Nicole Marthe Le Douarin
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Le Douarin in 2013
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| Born | 20 August 1930 Lorient, France
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| Occupation | Developmental biologist |
| Known for | Chimeras |
| Awards | Kyoto Prize (1986) Louis-Jeantet Prize for Medicine (1990) |
Nicole Marthe Le Douarin (born 20 August 1930) is a famous developmental biologist. She is known for her studies of chimeras. Chimeras are living things made of cells from two different individuals. Her work has helped us understand how the nervous and immune systems develop in animals.
Le Douarin created a special way to work with embryos. She made "chimeric" embryos using cells from both chickens and quails. Her research showed how the nervous and immune systems grow. She discovered that certain early cells, called precursor cells, could turn into many different types of cells. Her technique also helped explain how blood and immune systems form. Her studies on how the digestive system develops also paved the way for future discoveries.
Early Life and Education
Nicole Le Douarin was born on August 20, 1930, in Lorient, France. She was an only child. Her mother was a schoolteacher and her father was a businessman. In 1944, she had to leave her hometown for a short time. She went to a boarding school in Nantes to escape the German forces during World War II.
After the war, she returned to her high school in Lorient and finished in 1949. At first, she was interested in literature. But a great science teacher in her last year of high school made her love natural sciences. She met her future husband in high school. They both moved to Paris for university and got married in 1951.
She earned her Bachelor of Science degree in natural sciences from the Sorbonne in 1954. She didn't go straight to graduate school. Instead, she chose to teach high school science and raise her two daughters. In 1958, she went back to university. She joined the Institut d’Embryologie Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS). There, she worked with the famous embryologist Etienne Wolf. This research led to her getting her Ph.D. in 1964.
Career and Discoveries
In 1966, Nicole Le Douarin became a professor at the University of Nantes. The dean almost didn't let her join because he didn't like married women working with their husbands. But her mentor, Etienne Wolf, stepped in and changed his mind. However, she didn't get her own lab space or research money like her husband did. She also had a lot of teaching to do. Still, Le Douarin kept doing her research on bird embryos. She focused on how different layers of the embryo, called the endoderm and mesoderm, interact.
Le Douarin was very interested in how signals in the embryo guide its development. After many years of experiments, she created a special way to make chimeric embryos. She used cells from chicken and quail embryos. When she put quail mesoderm and chicken endoderm together, she noticed something important. The quail cell nuclei (the control centers of the cells) were much bigger and denser than the chicken cell nuclei.
This difference was because quail embryos have more of a substance called heterochromatin in their nuclei. Le Douarin found a special dye called Feulgen stain. This dye could color the heterochromatin. This meant she could tell which cells came from the quail and which came from the chicken. This was a huge step in her research. Now, she could follow specific quail cells as they developed in the embryo. She could see how different cell lines grew and changed in the developing organism.
Le Douarin's work with chimeric embryos became very well known. She received international funding for her research. She was also made the Director of the C.N.R.S. Institute of Embryology. She continued her experiments, focusing on how the neural crest develops in bird embryos. The neural crest is a group of cells that forms many important parts of the body.
In a 1980 paper, Le Douarin described how she put special quail nerve cells into a chick embryo. Her Feulgen stain technique allowed her to create a "fate map." This map showed where the neural crest cells from the quail moved and what they became. This research led to her first book, The Neural Crest, published in 1982. In the years that followed, she became a member of the French Academy of Science. She also received the Kyoto Prize for her work with bird chimeras. Throughout the late 1980s and early 1990s, Le Douarin joined many important scientific groups. She also received many more awards for her work.
Le Douarin took over as Director of the Institute of Embryology at the C.N.R.S. from her mentor, Etienne Wolf. She is famous for her work on how the nervous and immune systems develop in higher animals. Her research has also helped us understand how animals evolve and how the central nervous system forms. Her discoveries have even been used in studies about how songbirds behave.
Awards and Honors
- Prix de l'Académie des Sciences (1965)
- Member, European Molecular Biology Organization (1977)
- Member, Legion d'Honneur (1980)
- Member, French Academy of Sciences (1982)
- Member, American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1984)
- Kyoto Prize in Biotechnology and Medical Technology (1986)
- CNRS Gold Medal (1986)
- Member, Collège de France (Le Douarin was only the third woman admitted in its history)
- Fellow, The Royal Society (1989)
- Louis-Jeantet Prize for Medicine (1990)
- Honorary Fellow, The Royal College of Pathologists (1993)
- Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize from Columbia University (1993)
- Ross Harrison Prize from International Society of Developmental Biologists (1997)
- Member, Pontifical Academy of Sciences (3 September 1999)
- Honorary Fellow, Academy of Medical Sciences in Great Britain (2002)
- Member, Brazilian Academy of Sciences (2002)
- Pearl Meister Greengard Prize (2004) (inaugural winner of the Prize)
