Oliver Wessely, PhD

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	Oliver Wessely, PhD Associate Professor MEB, Room 6E5 1901 Perdido Street New Orleans, LA 70112 Phone: (504) 568-2028 Fax: (504) 568-4392 owesse@lsuhsc.edu
Degrees	Diploma Molecular Genetics - 1992 University of Vienna PhD Natural Sciences - 1997 University of Vienna
Bio	Dr. Wessely's laboratory is studying kidney development and its perturbation during diseases. The focus is on understanding the molecular nature of this regulation at the level of signal transduction and transcription using the amphibian Xenopus laevis. In contrast to slow developing mouse, Xenopus forms a functional pronephros (primitive kidney) within 31 hours. It thereby facilitates the fast identification and characterization of novel genes and regulatory pathways involved in kidney development and how those are perturbed during diseases such as Polycystic Kidney Disease. The results from these studies are then directly applied to subsequent studies in our lab using transgenic mice. Dr. Wessely received his Magister in Molecular Genetics in 1992, and his Ph.D. in Natural Sciences in 1997 from the University of Vienna in Austria. He then continued his research education as a postdoctoral fellow in the lab of E.M. DeRobertis at UCLA in Los Angeles, CA. In November 2003, he joined the Department of Genetics at LSUHSC. He has a joint appointment with the Department of Cell Biology & Anatomy.
Research Interests	The molecular mechanisms of kidney development in Xenopus and mouse.
Selected Publications	Wessely O, Kim JI, Tran U, Fuentaelba L and De Robertis EM, xBtg-x-Regulates Wnt/-Catenin Signaling During Early Xenopus Development, Dev. Biol. (in press), 2005. Wessely O, Kim JI, Geissert D, Tran U and De Robertis EM, Analysis of Spemann Organizer Formation in Xenopus Embryos by cDNA Macroarrays, Dev. Biol. 269, 552-566, 2004. Kuroda H, Wessley O and De Robertis EM, The Preorganizer Center Mediates Neural Induction in Ectoderm via -Catenin, Chordin and Noggin signals, PLOS Biology 2, 0623-0634, 2004. De Robertis EM, Larrain J, Oelgeschlager M and Wessely O, The Establishment of Spemann Organizer and Patterning of the Vertebrate Embryo, Nature Reviews Genetics 1; 171-181, 2000. Wessely O and De Robertis EM, The Xenopus homologue of Bicaudal-C is a localized maternal RNA that functions in endoderm differentiation, Development 127(10); 2053-2062, 2000.
Additional Info	Curriculum Vitae

Associate Professor