William McGinnis

Bill McGinnis received his Ph.D from UC Berkeley in 1982 and was a Jane Coffin Childs postdoctoral fellow at the University of Basel. From 1984 to 1995, he was on the faculty of Yale University. He received a Searle Scholar Award, a Presidential Young Investigator Award, and a Dreyfuss Teacher/Scholar Award. He is currently a Professor of Biology at UC San Diego , where he served as the Chairman of the Department of Biology from July 1998 - June 1999, as Associate Dean of the Division of Natural Sciences from July 1, 1999 - June 2000, and as Interim Dean of the newly established Division of Biological Sciences from July 1, 2000 - February 1, 2001.

Research McGinnis has made entensive achievements in molecular biology, looking at the evolutinonary changes in transcription factors by changes in genes called Hox genes. His main research has been in Drosophila, and comparison of Hox genes within that species with other species, noting if they are conserved among different phyla. Hox transcription functions control morphogenesis, and how the Hox proteins, their cofactors, and their DNA targets evolve to diversify morphology. One long term objective of research in the McGinnis lab is to understand the molecular interactions that underlie functional specificity in the Hox patterning system

Publications from the past five years have been included in Science, Oxford University Press, Nature, EMBO , and The American Journal of Human Genetics .

Further information on Professor McGinnis and his research is available at: [[1]]