Paul Trainor

Biography

Paul Trainor, Ph.D., spent his childhood at the beach, not playing with a chemistry set. “I wasn’t a bug collector—I was too busy playing sports,” says Trainor, water lover and native of Sydney, Australia. But as a University of Sydney undergrad he developed what he calls a “morbid fascination with freaky animals” and an appreciation of the power of genetics after learning that Hox gene mutations could produce fruit flies with legs where antennae should be. That curiosity fueled his present intense interest in how the vertebrate head and face is formed. Where better to acquire the tools necessary to pursue that interest than with renowned embryologist Patrick Tam, at the Children’s Medical Research Institute at the University of Sydney.

Research Interest

Understanding the mechanisms that control head and facial development is an important problem, as one-third of all human congenital birth defects exhibit craniofacial abnormalities. Neural crest cells are a migratory cell population born early during embryonic development, which ultimately generates much of the bone, cartilage, connective tissue, and peripheral nervous system of the head and face. Craniofacial abnormalities are therefore largely attributed to defects in the formation, proliferation, migration and differentiation of neural crest cells. Classical models for craniofacial development suggested that the cell fate and genetic identity of the neural crest is programmed prior to its migration from the neural tube. Recently, however, we demonstrated that cranial neural crest cells in mouse embryos are plastic and their development can be influenced by the tissues they interact with during migration. Thus, congenital craniofacial malformations can arise either through intrinsic or extrinsic defects in neural crest development. In the lab, we are currently investigating whether intrinsic neural crest cell defects are responsible for Treacher Collins Syndrome craniofacial abnormalities.