Post-transcriptional control of development and disease
The Hutchins Lab seeks to understand how post-transcriptional regulation controls developmental pluripotency and cell fate decisions in vivo, using vertebrate neural crest as a model. Our goal is to gain insights into how these programs fail during development or may be hijacked during disease.
The lab is currently accepting rotation students from the UCSF BMS and DSCB graduate programs.
About
The Hutchins Lab is led by Dr. Erica Hutchins (PI).
Commitment to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
I am deeply empathetic of the systemic barriers facing historically marginalized groups in STEM fields, academia, and in general society. Although I realize that I have more privileges than some groups, the obstacles I have faced due to my gender, low socioeconomic background, and first-generation college student status have enhanced my awareness of the adversity faced by individuals from underserved and underrepresented groups in their paths to the upper echelons of the biomedical field.
Support and empowerment of underserved and underrepresented groups through mentoring and outreach, as well as sensitivity to the historical, social, and economic factors that disproportionately put underserved and underrepresented groups at a disadvantage in STEM and academia is necessary to change our current environment. I believe it is imperative that scientists come from every ethnicity, gender, and sexual orientation, as well as economic class. If we can increase representation from all groups in science, then we can decrease the burden on students that are experiencing the struggles that I and many others have faced: struggles to feel included and access opportunities. Inclusion of groups from diverse backgrounds in the sciences, especially at the faculty level, is important to begin to change the perceptions of professional goals for historically marginalized groups.
I was very fortunate to have found supportive mentors during my PhD and postdoctoral training who have since provided invaluable guidance, without whom I would likely not be able to pursue a career in academia. This is a fact of which I am very mindful, and it is a substantial reason why I am invested in mentoring and supporting individuals from underserved and underrepresented groups. I hope to offer support, guidance, and encouragement to the trainees I interact with, assure them that academia and biomedical research is an accessible option, and empower them to make their STEM dreams a reality.
I am committed to be a vocal and supportive ally to my trainees, mentees, and colleagues, to ensure academia is accessible and welcoming to all.
Scientific Background
I currently hold an NIH Pathway to Independence Award (R00) as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Cell and Tissue Biology at UCSF, where my lab is working to understand the post-transcriptional control mechanisms that underlie underlie cell state transitions using vertebrate neural crest as a model.
I recently completed a postdoc in the lab of Dr. Marianne Bronner at Caltech, where I focused on the regulation of the neural crest epithelial—mesenchymal transition (EMT). I uncovered a new molecular mechanism whereby transient expression of a canonical Wnt signaling antagonist, Draxin, controls cranial neural crest EMT through intermediate attenuation of canonical Wnt signaling (Hutchins and Bronner, 2018); since its publication, our paper has been selected by the journal for featuring in two special issues (1; 2), and our follow-up paper was also featured on the cover of Developmental Biology (Hutchins and Bronner, 2019).
My recent works (Hutchins et al., 2022; Hutchins et al., 2020) provide novel, foundational evidence for the importance of post-transcriptional regulation and RNA granules in the control of neural crest development. The vision of my future independent research program is to parse how post-transcriptional regulation intersects with gene regulatory networks to control developmental pluripotency and cell fate decisions in vivo, providing new scientific avenues for translational applications to treat congenital malformations and cancers resulting from neural crest defects.
From my graduate research experiences in post-transcriptional regulation, and my postdoctoral research using live RNA imaging in combination with classical embryology techniques, I am uniquely well suited to tackle the study of post-transcriptional regulation in neural crest biology. As a graduate student in the lab of Dr. Ben Szaro at the University at Albany, I asked how post-transcriptional regulation and signaling pathways intersected to direct an important developmental process—axon outgrowth—in an intact, organismal context. My graduate research generated novel and critical insights into the regulation of the RNA-binding protein, hnRNP K, and afforded me in-depth knowledge of post-transcriptional regulatory mechanisms at the cellular and molecular level (Hutchins and Szaro, 2013; Hutchins et al., 2015; Hutchins et al., 2016).