Rachel Mullen

Dr. Mullen is an Instructor in the Department of Genetics. She completed her PhD in the Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Department at Indiana University School of Medicine at Indianapolis. She worked on further understanding transcriptional regulation of pituitary development. Through her research, she discovered multiple transcriptional enhancers of the LHX3 gene, a key factor required for pituitary development whose mutation results in human combined pituitary hormone deficiency disorder. Dr. Mullen joined Dr. Behringer’s laboratory as a Postdoctoral Fellow in 2011 and was promoted to Instructor in 2017. Her research here focuses on understanding mesenchyme-epithelia interactions during early sex differentiation. The Mullerian ducts are a pair of simple tubes with outer mesenchyme and inner epithelium which differentiate into a uterus in females but are regressed in males. Hormone signaling from the male testes to the Mullerian duct mesenchyme activate cellular and molecular changes resulting in regression of the mesenchyme and adjacent epithelial cells. Her overall goal is to broaden understanding of how adjacent cell types communicate. By elucidating the mechanism behind this spatially and temporally defined developmental process her work may lead to key insights into cell-cell interactions in other developmental processes and diseases including cancer.