Kathryn Barton

Biography

Kathryn Barton attended elementary school in Oak Park, Ill and grades 6 through high school (Humanistiska Linjen) in Göteborg and Mölndal, Sweden. In 1978 she returned to the United States to attend college at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She was inspired to study genetics and developmental biology by undergraduate coursework she took at the UW. In particular the Biocore curriculum, a two-year, in depth survey course, was influential. In addition to offering excellent lectures by faculty experts, this course afforded her the opportunity to pursue an independent laboratory project in William Engels’ lab in the Department of Genetics. Her project was to estimate the rate of new P element insertion on the X chromosome in a hybrid dysgenic Drosophila. Other undergraduate lab work included dishwashing in a Department of Plant Pathology lab and fieldwork for maize geneticist Jerry Kermicle. She received her B.S. in Molecular Biology in 1983. She did graduate research in Dr. Judith Kimble’s lab, also at the University of Wisconsin. There, she worked to understand how hermaphrodites of the nematode worm C. elegans make two kinds of germ cells, sperm and eggs. This work helped identify three genes - FEM3, FOG1 and GLD1 - that direct germ cells down either a sperm or an oocyte pathway of development. She received her Ph.D. in Genetics in 1989.

Research Interest

Her lab continues to study the genetic control of shoot apical meristem function and the establishment of leaf polarity using molecular genetics