Elaine Fuchs: A love for science that's more than skin deep

E laine Fuchs has collected many awards in her 30 years researching mammalian skin development, but it's hard to beat the two prizes she received in late 2009. Shortly before winning the prestigious L'Oreál-UNESCO award for women in science, Fuchs was awarded the National Medal of Science— the US's highest honor for outstanding scientifi c contributions. After studying bacterial sporulation as a PhD student with Charles Gilvarg at Princeton, Fuchs joined Howard Green's laboratory at MIT, where she investigated the expression of keratins in differentiating skin cells (1, 2). Fuchs then returned to her native Illinois to begin her own laboratory at the University of Chicago, and stayed for more than 20 years before moving to The Rockefeller University in New York in 2002. Fuchs' research has touched on many aspects of skin differentiation and function. Asked to pick her favorite work, she chooses her pioneering use of mouse genetics to identify mutant keratins as the cause of several human skin diseases (3, 4). She also mentions the generation of super furry mice by expressing a stabilized version of the transcription factor ␤-catenin (5) as well as the identifi cation and characterization of a multipotent stem cell population in the hair follicle (6, 7). In a recent interview, Fuchs discussed her latest awards, and explained why the skin continues to hold her interest. Is it true that you refused to take the exam for graduate school entry? Yes! [laughs] I was graduating near the top of my class from a very good university and I felt that the Graduate Record Examination wasn't testing my real knowledge, but rather how I could perform in a written exam. So I decided that perhaps they'd appreciate some creative writing instead. I wrote three pages explaining the reasons why I was not going to be taking my GRE, and I sent it along with my applications. I got accepted everywhere, but it's quite unlikely that I would be admitted to any graduate program in the US today. I don't think professors are as open-minded toward rebellious students as they were during the Vietnam War era. How did you decide to go to Howard Green's laboratory for your postdoc? I had been working on bacterial sporu-lation and, in the course of that, I studied bacterial cell walls. Many antibiotics target the enzymes that synthesize cell walls, and that medical aspect was what I really liked …