Jon Clarke

Jon Clarke received his Ph.D. at Bristol University in 1983 after studying the neuroanatomy and neurophysiology of the Xenopus embryo spinal cord. He then moved to King’s College London to work with Nigel Holder on development and regeneration of the amphibian spinal cord before moving on to work with Andrew Lumsden on the rhombomeric organisation of the chick embryo brainstem. In 1994 he took a lectureship in the Anatomy and Developmental Biology department at University College London. In 2000 he changed model system from the chick to the zebrafish embryo in order to take advantage of the superior transparency of the fish embryo to pursue live imaging studies of morphogenesis and neurogenesis in the early vertebrate CNS. His current interests are focussed on the role of polarised cell divisions in both these processes, in particular the generation of the apical surface of the neuroepithelium during neurulation and the potential role of asymmetric inheritance of the apical domain of a neural progenitor in the generation of asymmetric daughter cell fates. In 2008 he became Head of the Department of Anatomy and Human Sciences at King’s College London, and a member of the MRC Centre for Developmental Neurobiology at KCL.