Draft:Leslie Pick
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Submission declined on 9 September 2026 by Carolina2k22 (talk).
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Leslie Pick is a professor in the Department of Entomology and Associate Dean of Graduate Education in the College of Computer, Mathematics, and Natural Sciences (CMNS) at the University of Maryland, College Park (UMD).[1][2] She is most known for having tracked the evolution of the gene fushi tarazu back to the Hox gene.[3]
Education and career
[edit]Being from the Bronx, New York, Pick attended the Bronx High School of Science.[4] In 1977, she graduated from Wesleyan University, earning a bachelor of arts degree in psychology/biology (a joint program).[1][5] She later went on to earn a Ph.D in biochemistry from Albert Einstein College of Medicine in 1986.[5][6] She had been advised by Jerard Hurwitz.[5] Soon after, Pick became a postdoctoral fellow in Walter Gehring’s lab at the Biozentrum at the University of Basel until 1989.[5]
Pick later received her first faculty role as a researcher and professor at Mt. Sinai School of Medicine in 1990.[4] In 2003, she took on the role of professor and scientist at UMD and has remained there since.[4] She served as the director of the graduate program in Molecular & Cell Biology (MOCB) from 2004 to 2008, and has been an affiliate member of the Department of Cell Biology & Molecular Genetics since 2005.[6]
From 2012 to 2013, Pick also briefly served as a program director in the Division of Integrated Organismal Sciences at the National Science Foundation (NSF)[7] and as President of the Pan-American Society for Evolutionary Developmental Biology from 2022 to 2023[8]. From 2013 to 2024, Pick served as Chair of the Department of Entomology. In 2025, she was promoted to Associate Dean for Graduate Education in CMNS.[2]
Research
[edit]Pick currently runs Pick Lab at the University of Maryland. The lab continues her research on evolutionary development from her time at Mt. Sinai, expanding it to study multiple species of insects and their phylogeny. Much of her work involves Drosophila melanogaster, a species of fruit fly.
Modeling Diabetes in Fruit Flies
[edit]Pick Lab was able to model human Type 1 diabetes in Drosophila.[9] Diabetes has been linked to dysfunction of Insulin/Insulin-like growth factor-1 Signaling (IIS) in many different animals. Dr. Ora Rosen’s lab found similar IIS receptors in Drosophila which are encoded by 7 genes called Drosophila insulin-like peptides (DILPs).[10] Pick and her team removed these DILPs from the Drosophila and found that those without DILPs 1-5 displayed abnormalities similar to those of Type 1 diabetes, but those without DILPs 6 or 7 did not show any metabolic changes.[10]
A later study[11], co-authored by Samuel W. Cushman of the National Institutes of Health and published in 2013, expanded on this research. The team found that Drosophila fat cells have transport mechanisms similar to those in humans for taking up sugar. They were able to introduce insulin to these cells and found that like in mammals, Drosophila cells transported the insulin to the GLUT4 transporter and then to the cell membrane.[11] Because fruit flies respond to insulin so similarly to humans, studying diabetes could become much easier.[12]
Tracking the Hox Gene
[edit]More recently, the lab has primarily studied embryonic development in insects, particularly the evolution of the Hox gene. First discovered in insects, the Hox gene in all animals controls how their body-segments are formed. Pick Lab has been able to track the gene fushi tarazu (ftz) through arthropod phylogeny, primarily in Drosophila.[7][13] Ftz likely arose from the Hox gene, giving it a body segmentation function in Drosophila, but Pick and her team found that ftz likely changed many times to have various functions across many arthropod species.[14][15]
While Drosophila is the most commonly observed to study the insect segmentation, Pick’s lab also looked at Oncopeltus, or milkweed bugs. They found that segmentation did not occur through ftz the same way it did in Drosophila, and that an entirely different gene may be at work in Oncopeltus.[13] This could mean that different insect species may all have varying ways of controlling the same process of body-segmentation.[2] Pick Lab also studies RNAi mechanisms and applications in other species of insects.[7][16]
Awards and honors
[edit]References
[edit]- 1 2 "Leslie Pick | Department of Entomology | University of Maryland". entomology.umd.edu. June 3, 2026. Retrieved September 9, 2026.
- 1 2 3 "Leslie Pick Named Associate Dean for Graduate Education in UMD's College of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences | College of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences | University of Maryland". cmns.umd.edu. July 6, 2026. Retrieved September 9, 2026.
- ↑ Löhr, Ulrike; Pick, Leslie (April 2005). "Cofactor-Interaction Motifs and the Cooption of a Homeotic Hox Protein into the Segmentation Pathway of Drosophila melanogaster". Current Biology. 15 (7): 643–649. Bibcode:2005CBio...15..643L. doi:10.1016/j.cub.2005.02.048. PMID 15823536.
- 1 2 3 4 "Leslie Pick, ESA Fellow (2016) | Entomological Society of America". entsoc.org. September 14, 2026. Retrieved September 9, 2026.
- 1 2 3 4 5 Society for Developmental Biology (December 22, 2022). Leslie Pick_2022 PASEDB Rudolf A. Raff Pioneer Award. Retrieved September 16, 2026 – via YouTube.
- 1 2 Associate Editor (May 8, 2025). "Four Women Professors Who Have Been Selected for New Positions". Women In Academia Report. Retrieved September 16, 2026.
{{cite web}}:|last=has generic name (help) - 1 2 3 "Dr. Leslie Pick". PICK LAB. Retrieved September 9, 2026.
- ↑ "Executive Council: 2023". Pan-Am Evo Devo (PASEDB). Archived from the original on March 11, 2026. Retrieved September 16, 2026.
- ↑ "UM Scientists Create Fruit Fly Model to Help Unravel Genetics of Human Diabetes | University of Maryland College of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences". chemlife.umd.edu. Archived from the original on December 10, 2010. Retrieved September 16, 2026.
- 1 2 Zhang, Hua; Liu, Jingnan; Li, Caroline R.; Momen, Bahram; Kohanski, Ronald A.; Pick, Leslie (November 17, 2009). "Deletion of Drosophila insulin-like peptides causes growth defects and metabolic abnormalities". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 106 (46): 19617–19622. doi:10.1073/pnas.0905083106. PMC 2780814. PMID 19887630.
- 1 2 Crivat, Georgeta; Lizunov, Vladimir A.; Li, Caroline R.; Stenkula, Karin G.; Zimmerberg, Joshua; Cushman, Samuel W.; Pick, Leslie (November 6, 2013). "Insulin Stimulates Translocation of Human GLUT4 to the Membrane in Fat Bodies of Transgenic Drosophila melanogaster". PLOS ONE. 8 (11) e77953. Public Library of Science. Bibcode:2013PLoSO...877953C. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0077953. ISSN 1932-6203. PMC 3819322. PMID 24223128.
- ↑ "'Diabetic flies' can speed up disease-fighting research". ScienceDaily. Retrieved September 16, 2026.
- 1 2 Reding, Katie; Chung, Matthew; Heath, Abigail; Hotopp, Julie Dunning; Pick, Leslie (November 15, 2024). "Same rule, different genes: Blimp1 is a pair-rule gene in the milkweed bug Oncopeltus fasciatus". Science Advances. 10 (46) eadq9045. American Association for the Advancement of Science. Bibcode:2024SciA...10.9045R. doi:10.1126/sciadv.adq9045. PMC 11566998. PMID 39546609.
- ↑ "Fearless Science: A Half-Century of Bold Research | College of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences | University of Maryland". cmns.umd.edu. September 15, 2026. Retrieved September 16, 2026.
- ↑ Heffer, Alison; Shultz, Jeffrey W.; Pick, Leslie (October 19, 2010). "Surprising flexibility in a conserved Hox transcription factor over 550 million years of evolution". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 107 (42): 18040–18045. Bibcode:2010PNAS..10718040H. doi:10.1073/pnas.1010746107. PMC 2964257. PMID 20921393.
- ↑ Argaez, Ebony Michelle (2022). "In the Spotlight—Graduate student". Journal of Experimental Zoology Part B: Molecular and Developmental Evolution. 338 (4): 213–214. Bibcode:2022JEZB..338..213A. doi:10.1002/jez.b.23106. ISSN 1552-5015. PMID 34841661.
- ↑ "Award Recipients List | Office of Faculty Affairs". faculty.umd.edu. Retrieved September 9, 2026.
- ↑ "Science". AAAS. doi:10.1126/science.ada0325. Retrieved September 9, 2026.
- ↑ "Raff Pioneers Award". Pan-Am Evo Devo (PASEDB). Retrieved September 9, 2026.
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