Betty Hay

Elizabeth Dexter "Betty" Hay (April 2, 1927 – August 20, 2007) was an American cell and developmental biologist. She was best known for her research in limb regeneration, the role of the extracellular matrix (ECM) in cell differentiation, and epithelial-mesenchymal transitions (EMT). Hay led many research teams in discovering new findings in these related fields, which led her to obtain several high honors and awards for her work. Hay primarily worked with amphibians during her years of limb regeneration work and then moved onto avian epithelia for research on the ECM and EMT. Hay was thrilled by the introduction of transmission electron microscopy (TEM) during her lifetime, which aided her in many of her findings throughout her career. Moreover, Hay was a huge advocate of women in science during her lifetime.

Early days and education Betty Hay was born in Melbourne, Florida, on April 2, 1927, to Isaac and Lucille Elizabeth Hay. She lived with her parents, twin brother, and sister. When World War II began, her father, who was a practicing physician at the time, enlisted in the US Army Medical Corp. The family was sent to Biloxi, Mississippi. They were soon transferred to Fort Hays, Kansas, where the resided for six months before Lt. Col. Hay was deported to the Philippines. After her chaotic childhood filled with many moves and various schools, Hay attended Smith College for four years. In 1948, she graduated as summa cum laude obtaining her BA degree in Biological Sciences. Betty's love for drawing pictures of slides and dissected animals are some of the experiences that cemented her aspiration to pursue a career in biology. Rose eventually convinced Hay to pursue an MD instead of a PhD degree, as he believed it would give Hay more opportunities in the future. She then went on to receive an MD degree from Johns Hopkins in 1952 and was one of only four women in the graduating class. When beginning her research career with Rose, their focus was on the induction of limb regeneration in animals that were not able to regenerate their limbs. They worked on tracing the origin of the cells in regenerating blastema. By transmission electron microscopy (TEM) they showed that the blastema that formed on the amputated surface of the amphibian limb contained uniform undifferentiated cells.

In 1957, Don Fischman started as a medical student at Cornell and immediately joined Betty's laboratory due to his undergraduate experience of working with amphibian limb regeneration. They traced the blastema cells with titrated thymidine and discovered that the epidermis did not enter the blastema. The blastema was the formed internal tissues, not the reserve cells or the epidermis, that gave rise to the regenerating limb. Their autoradiography observations on regenerating limbs also proved that mononuclear blood cells are the source of osteoclasts. When looking at the limbs, they could only obtain labeled nuclei from the monocytes. Therefore, Hay specifically labeled the blood and exhibited that the osteoclasts came from the blood cells. In 1972, Jonathan Bard came to spend a postdoctoral year in the Hay lab, working on two projects. The first was on corneal endothelium morphogenesis and they, with Sam Meller, showed that the key constraint on migration was space. The second was using Nomarski optics to study how corneal fibroblasts migrated through the stroma in vivo and in collagen gels (a technique developed by JB and Tom Elsdale in Scotland). This work showed that contact inhibition of movement occurred in vivo and in 3D gels.

Gary Greenburg then entered Betty' lab as a graduate student, and they started working with 48-hour chick embryos. They were able to see epithelia transform into mesenchyme when they were suspended in collagen gels. Jim Fitchett also entered the lab at about the same time. He worked with Hay using TEM to prove that EMT removed the palatal seam that forms when the opposite shelves fuse. Furthermore, their studies of the signaling pathways involved in EMT during development led to the discovery that Smads can activate these pathways in the embryo, instead of β-catenin. During this time, Hay served as the President of the American Society for Cell Biology, the Society for Development Biology, and the American Association of Anatomists. She was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1984. With Hay's gift honoring her parents, the Isaac Morris and Lucille Elizabeth Hay Professorship in Embryology was established at the Johns Hopkins University in 2009. Peter N. Devreotes is the current holder of this academic rank.

Personal life Betty's immense dedicated and passion in her research caused her to always put her research career before her personal life. This led her to move around a lot by herself and leave many good friends behind. She was always more focused on her work than her relationships. Hay dated many men throughout her life, but she claimed that the men of her time were "merely looking for home-makers". Hay never married or had any children. Towards the end of her life she resided in Weston, Massachusetts with many cats. Hay died of lung cancer on August 20, 2007, in hospice in Wayland, Massachusetts.