Rate My Professor Marissa Gredler

Marissa Gredler is an Assistant Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology in Harvard University's Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology, having joined on January 1, 2025. The Gredler lab investigates how dynamic cellular behaviors generate complex tissue structures during vertebrate development, with a focus on the cellular mechanisms of epithelial formation in live mammalian embryos. Employing high-resolution 4D imaging, targeted genetic and molecular perturbations, advanced mouse embryo culture, time-lapse imaging, and custom image analysis, the lab explores cell polarization in epithelial morphogenesis, coordination of cell movements during axis elongation, and mechanisms ensuring robustness and plasticity in collective cell behaviors. In embryonic development, groups of cells construct elaborate tissue shapes through precisely coordinated behaviors; disruptions in this coordination contribute to structural birth defects and tumorigenesis. Gredler's research addresses how cells behave during development, how these behaviors are regulated in complex environments by the cytoskeleton, and how global tissue patterns emerge from local cell interactions using multi-scale approaches from subcellular to organismal levels.

Gredler completed both her undergraduate and graduate studies at the University of Florida, earning her Ph.D. in 2015 under Martin Cohn, where she studied developmental genetics and morphogenesis, including urethral tubulogenesis in transgenic mice and comparative analyses of reptilian external genital development. She performed postdoctoral work at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in Jennifer Zallen's lab, pioneering live imaging of intact mouse embryos at cellular and subcellular resolution and identifying multicellular rosettes—spherical cysts that expand and fuse to form epithelia—as key structures linking mesenchymal-epithelial transitions to radial intercalation during axis elongation. Following this, she served a year as a research fellow at the National Cancer Institute in Terry Yamaguchi's lab, examining cell behaviors in relation to cell fate. Key publications include 'Multicellular rosettes link mesenchymal-epithelial transition to radial intercalation in the mouse axial mesoderm' (Developmental Cell, 2023), 'Collective radial intercalation drives epithelial formation in the mammalian axial mesoderm' (Molecular Biology of the Cell, 2023), 'Foxa1 and Foxa2 orchestrate development of the urethral tube and division of the embryonic cloaca through an autoregulatory loop with Shh' (Developmental Biology, 2020), and 'Evolution of external genitalia: Insights from reptilian development' (Sexual Development, 2014). Colleagues praise her elegant work uncovering the choreography of embryonic cells that drives tissue shape and form. Gredler contributes to public science communication through events like the Multiverse Concert Series and plans to develop a developmental biology course while mentoring trainees.