Martin Hooper - Overview

My laboratory's research interest is in the use of embryonal stem cell lines as a model system for studying processes occurring in embryogenesis and as a route to transgenesis, thereby providing both a means of analysing the developmental effects of genetic lesions and of constructing models of human genetic diseases. This has involved collaboration with other laboratories both within and outside the University of Edinburgh, the latter category including those of Prof. Nicholas Hastie (MRC Human Genetics Unit, Edinburgh), Prof. David Whittingham (MRC Experimental Embryology and Teratology Unit, London), Dr Alan Handyside (Hammersmith Hospital), Dr Oliver Smithies (Universities of Wisconsin and North Carolina), Dr Anton Berns (Netherlands Cancer Institute) and Dr Susumu Tonegawa (MIT). In 1995 my group and the one directed by Prof. Colin Bird and Prof. Andrew Wyllie combined to analyse oncosuppressor gene function and apoptosis in colorectal carcinogenesis, this constituting the core programme of the Sir Alastair Currie CRC Laboratories. The core programme has now been extended from 2000 to 2003 in collaboration with Prof. David Harrison to undertake functional analysis of early genetic lesions in colorectal carcinogenesis, and I also have an MRC-funded programme running to 2005 in collaboration with Prof. Stewart Fleming, Prof. John Ansell and Prof. John Mullins to study the mechanistic basis of Denys-Drash syndrome using conditional gene targeting technology.