Peter Pfeffer

Ever since watching sea urchin embryos develop during my honours year I have been fascinated by embryogenesis – how to get from a single cell to a complex patterned multicellular organism. I have followed this quest, using a range of vertebrate and invertebrate model organisms and working in labs in four different continents.

For my PhD in 1991 at the University of Cape Town, South Africa, I isolated Homeobox-containing genes in Sea Urchins, before moving to the Lab of Eddy De Robertis at UCLA to work on Retinoic Acid receptors during Xenopus (frog) embryogenesis. After a short period at the Salk Institute, San Diego, in the Lab of Juan-Carlos Iszpisua-Belmonte during which I isolated and characterised the Crescent gene in chick embryos, I joined the IMP in Austria, Vienna, working initially as Postdoc, then Staff Scientist, in Dr Meinrad Busslinger’s lab. Here I analysed the role of the Pax2/5/8 family of transcription factors in the midbrain-hindbrain organiser region of mouse embryos.

In 2001, I came to Agresearch leading a team to isolate cattle genes associated with embryonic competency, follicular dominancy and somatic cell nuclear transfer (cloning). Our work on the role of the transcription factor Elf5 during mouse embryogenesis led to important insights into the early interaction/signaling between embryonic and extra-embryonic tissues. My group has pioneered using cattle as an alternate mammalian embryological system and we have demonstrated fundamental differences between early lineage determination in cattle and mice by genetically modifying cattle embryos.

I joined Victoria University of Wellington on July 1, 2014. My present research in developmental biology is focussed on lineage determination, gastrulation and the development of the placental lineage, using mice and cattle as model systems. My research speciality is combining genetic approaches with classical physiological methodology to answer fundamental embryological and evolutionary questions on a gene expression and mechanistic level.