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Life with two X chromosomes

03 April 2025 18:30 - 19:30 The Royal Society Free Watch online
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Join us for the Croonian Prize Lecture delivered by Professor Edith Heard FRS.

The Croonian Medal and Lecture 2025 is awarded to Professor Edith Heard for being a leading figure in X-chromosome biology.

X-chromosome inactivation during early female development is an essential process that is required to achieve appropriate dosage between XX females and XY males, for X-linked gene products.  The Heard lab is interested in understanding how the differential treatment of the two X chromosomes is established during development, how the X chromosome becomes silenced and how this is maintained stably, or reversed in certain circumstances, either normally or in a disease context such as cancer. The establishment of X-chromosome inactivation involves a long non-coding Xist RNA that triggers chromosome-wide chromatin re-organisation and gene silencing. Studying this process has revealed general principles of gene regulation, chromosome architecture and epigenetic mechanisms. The Heard lab’s insights into the nature of the chromosome-wide changes that affect the whole X chromosome. In particular we have studied the role of the Xist-recruited SPEN protein, that triggers gene silencing and dampens expression of genes that escape XCI. The loss of topologically associating domains (TADs) are also early events during XCI2. Our recent insights into the relationship between chromatin states, 3D chromosome organisation and the events underlying X-linked gene silencing and escape from XCI will be presented.

Edith Heard is European Molecular Biology (EMBL) Laboratory Director General and Professor of the Collège de France. She studied Natural Sciences (specializing in Genetic) at Cambridge University (UK) and obtained her PhD in Biochemistry from the Imperial Cancer Research Fund in London. After a postdoc at the Institut Pasteur in Paris, she moved to the Institut Curie where she became Director of the Genetics and Developmental Biology Unit in 2010, before moving to EMBL in 2019. In 2012, Edith Heard also became Professor of Epigenetics and Cellular Memory at the College de France. Edith’s laboratory specialises in the epigenetic process of X-chromosome inactivation (XCI) whereby one of the two X chromosomes is silenced during female mammalian development. Her group has revealed the remarkable dynamics of X inactivation in development and disease and provided key insights into the underlying mechanism as well as exploring the basis of sex bias in development and disease. Since joining EMB in 2019L, Edith Heard built up a new pan-European scientific programme that seeks to investigate the basis of life in its natural context, from “Molecules to Ecosystems”, opening up a new era of interdisciplinary life sciences that will fuel new AI opportunities. Heard is a fellow of the Royal Society, and a member of several academies, including the French “Académie des Sciences” and the US National Academy of Sciences and National Academy of Medicine. Amongst her distinctions, in 2024 she received the CNRS Gold Medal and in 2020 the L’Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science International Award. Later this year, Edith Heard will become the next Director and CEO of the Francis Crick institute.

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