Geraldine Seydoux

Dr. Geraldine Seydoux is the Huntington Sheldon Professor in Medical Discovery in the Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and an investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

Dr. Seydoux’s research focuses on the development of the germline. Her lab identified global inhibition of mRNA transcription as an essential first step to establish the embryonic germline and characterized post-transcriptional mechanisms of gene regulation that promote germ cell fate and differentiation.  Most recently, her lab described a family of intrinsically-disordered proteins that stabilize RNA granules in germ cells by functioning as surface-tension reducing agents (Pickering agents), the first demonstration of this type of activity in cells.

Geraldine Seydoux obtained her Ph.D. in 1991 from Princeton University with Iva Greenwald. She did her post-doctoral training at the Carnegie Institution of Washington with Andy Fire before joining the faculty at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in 1995. She was awarded a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers from the National Institutes of Health in 1999, a MacArthur Fellowship in 2001, and the Gruber Prize in Genetics (shared with Lehmann and Priess) in 2022.  She is an investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Sciences, and the European Molecular Biology Organization.