John McCarrey, Ph.D.
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Affiliation(s):
University of Texas at San Antonio
Areas of Interest:
epigenetics, stem cells, nonhuman primate models, disease in a dish models
Biography & Research:
John R. McCarrey is a Professor of Cell & Molecular Biology in the Department of Biology at the University of Texas at San Antonio. He holds the Kleberg Distinguished University Chair in Cellular & Molecular Biology, directs the San Antonio Cellular Therapeutics Institute and founded PriStem – a primate resource for developing stem cell therapies. He also holds joint appointments in the Departments of Obstetrics and Gynecology, and Cellular & Structural Biology at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, and is an Adjunct Scientist at the Southwest National Primate Research Center and an Adjunct Professor in the Center for Reproduction at Washington State University. He earned a BS degree in Animal Science (1972) and MS (1977) and PhD (1981) degrees in Genetics – all from the University of California, Davis. His predoctoral research was focused on development of primordial germ cells in chick embryos. He then undertook an NIH-sponsored postdoctoral fellowship at the City of Hope Research Institute, where he worked on the molecular biology of sex determination in mammals. Dr. McCarrey discovered the first functional retrogene in the human genome – the spermatogenesis-specific PGK2 gene. This work published in Nature in 1987, and set the stage for a 25-year NIH-funded project to discern molecular mechanisms regulating cell type- and stage-specific transcription in spermatogenic cells. In 1986, he took up his first faculty position in the Division of Reproductive Biology at the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health in Baltimore, and in 1991 he moved to the Southwest Foundation for Biomedical Research in San Antonio. Finally, in 2001 he moved to his current position at the University of Texas at San Antonio.
Dr. McCarrey’s other research interests epigenetic programming in the mammalian germ line, meiotic sex chromosome inactivation in mammalian spermatocytes maintenance of genetic integrity in germ cells and stem cells the induction of abnormalities in the epigenome (“epimutations”) by environmental effects, transgenerational epigenetic inheritance, the development of foundational spermatogonial stem cells in the mammalian testis, the use of nonhuman primate models for preclinical study of stem cell-based therapies, and the use of disease in a dish models for studies of relevant cell types from human patients.
