Jenny Tenlen, Ph.D.

tenlen@email.unc.edu

• Department of Biology

Education

• University of Washington Seattle
  Molecular and Cellular Biology

Mentors

• Bob Goldstein, Ph.D.

Biography

I grew up in Seattle, WA, and very early on knew that I wanted to teach. In 1995, I graduated cum laude with a B.S. in Biology from the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, WA, a liberal-arts school with a strong focus on undergraduate research. As a Rotary Ambassadorial Scholar in 1995-1996, I had the opportunity to research the genetics of desiccation tolerance in a South African grass at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. After returning to the US, I earned my Master in Teaching in secondary education from Seattle University, and taught high school science for several years. While I enjoyed teaching, I really missed being in the lab, and made the difficult decision to return to graduate school, joining the Molecular and Cellular Biology program at the University of Washington. As a grad student in Jim Priess's lab at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, my research focused on the role of a key zinc finger protein in the establishment of anterior-posterior polarity in 1-cell embryos of the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans.

While in graduate school, I became very interested in how germ cells are specified, and how different organisms solve the problem of protecting germ cells from factors that promote differentiation into specific tissues. In Bob Goldstein's lab at UNC-Chapel Hill, I have begun to address these questions by developing the tardigrade Hypsibius dujardini as a model for understanding germ cell fate specification. Tardigrades (also known as water bears), besides being exceptionally cute, are closely related to arthropods and nematodes. Their evolutionary position will help us to better understand how the genetic pathways involved in invertebrate development have arisen. I am very excited to be a part of the SPIRE program, where the training opportunities will allow me to combine my passions for teaching and research.