21 Facts About Huda Zoghbi

Huda Yahya Zoghbi is a Lebanese-born American geneticist, and a professor at the Departments of Molecular and Human Genetics, Neuroscience and Neurology at the Baylor College of Medicine.

Huda Zoghbi's work helped elucidate the genes and genetic mechanisms responsible for a number of devastating neurological disorders, such as Rett syndrome and spinocerebellar ataxia type 1.

Huda Zoghbi was born in Beirut, Lebanon in 20 June 1954, and raised in Beirut.

Huda Zoghbi loved reading works by William Shakespeare, Jane Austen and William Wordsworth in high school and intended to pursue literature at university.

Huda Zoghbi's mother convinced her to study biology instead, on the grounds that 'a woman growing up in the Middle East should pick a career ensuring independence and security, while she can always write on the side'.

Huda Zoghbi was admitted as a biological sciences major at the American University of Beirut in 1973 and entered the university's medical school 2 years later.

Huda Zoghbi then started a 3-year term as a postdoctoral researcher in pediatric neurology after she finished her residency in 1982.

From 1982 to 1985, Huda Zoghbi was a postdoctoral researcher in pediatric neurology at the Baylor College of Medicine.

Huda Zoghbi became an assistant professor at the Department of Pediatrics at Baylor in 1988, and was successively promoted to associate professor in 1991 and professor in 1994.

Huda Zoghbi is a member of the board of directors of Regeneron Pharmaceuticals.

Huda Zoghbi served on the Life Sciences jury for the Infosys Prize in 2014.

In 1983, Huda Zoghbi learnt of Rett syndrome from Bengt Hagberg's account in Annals of Neurology.

Since most patients of Rett syndrome were girls, and symptoms were very consistent across patients, Huda Zoghbi believed genetics were involved in the disease process.

In 1988, Huda Zoghbi left Beaudet's group and founded her own lab at Baylor.

Huda Zoghbi's team went on to find that, in addition to its involvement in balance and coordination, Math1 is crucial to hearing, the formation of secretory cells in the gut.

Huda Zoghbi's lab has shown that aberrant activation of Math1 could lead to medulloblastoma, a common childhood brain tumor, and that mice which did not express Math1, did not develop the tumor.

Ever since Huda Zoghbi was introduced to Rett syndrome early in her career, she has been working on the disorder alongside other research, despite the lack of enthusiasm from her colleagues, fellow researchers and funding agencies.

In 1999, a postdoctoral researcher in Huda Zoghbi's lab identified MECP2 as the causative gene.

Huda Zoghbi's team keeps studying MECP2, and discovered in 2004 that overexpressing the protein in mouse led to an autism-like neurological disorder.

Recently, Huda Zoghbi confirmed that the MECP2 protein bound 5-methylcytosine not in CpG sites, and that restoring the level of MECP2 protein in a subset of neurons was sufficient to rescue some symptoms of Rett syndrome.

Huda Zoghbi met her husband, William Huda Zoghbi when they were medical students in the American University of Beirut.