Anthony Mahowald

Anthony Mahowald (born November 24, 1932) is a molecular genetics and cellular biologist who served as the department chair of the molecular genetics and cellular biology department at the University of Chicago. His lab focused on the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster, specifically focusing on controlling the genetic aspects of major developmental events.

Educational career Anthony Mahowald was born in Albany, Minnesota, on November 24, 1932. Both his undergraduate and doctoral degrees were in the field of biology.

Professional career Mahowald has worked in many universities in his academic career. From 1972 to 1982, he started his career at Marquette University, while also working for the Institute of Cancer Research in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Then, he accepted a position at Indiana University from 1972 to 1982. Finally, from 1990 to 2002, Mahowald was employed at the University of Chicago as the department chair for molecular genetics and cellular biology.

One of Malhowald's groundbreaking articles involve the study of the stem cell niche, which is a specialized environment where adult stem cells reside in some insects and amphibians. This area helps to keep stem cells in an undifferentiated state through short-range signaling. Mahowald discovered that this area, and specifically the e-cadherin-based stem cell adhesion, is vital in maintaining the Drosophila germline stem cells. This creates very large cells, but their genetic information cannot be organized and separated into chromosomes due to inhibition of cyclin-dependent kinase activity. Mahowald discovered pre-mitotic endocycles in rectal non-cancerous polyploid cells in Drosophila. The endocycling creates a polyploid cell, and these polyploid have high error-rates, suggesting that there will be an accumulation of cells with incorrect number of chromosomes.

Mahowald also studied the actin and the various genes that code for very similar types of actin in an organism. Mahowald was concerned as to why organisms have multiple, very similar, genes that encode for the same proteins with only a few amino acids different. To attempt to answer this question, Mahowald and team isolated two actin genes, Act42A and Act5C, with only two amino acids being different between the two genes, and both are present in all cells in the Drosophila during development.

Other researchers had established that multiple isoforms are crucial for development. It was determined that the small differences make actin filaments that do have different functions, such as cytoplasmic functions and muscular functions. Indeed, Mahowald established that there is a need for multiple forms of actin due to the large quantity of actin needed in a cell, along with the fact that some cells have different microfilament-based needs. However, he set out to determine if these actin filaments could be interchanged due to their similarity in structure.