biology

Margaret Buckingham

Margaret Buckingham is a biology topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Margaret Buckingham rather than just read about it. In short: Margaret Buckingham, (born 2 March 1945) is a French-British developmental biologist working in the fields of myogenesis and cardiogenesis. She is an honorary professor at the Pasteur Institute in Paris and emeritus director in the Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS).

Key takeaways

Margaret Buckingham belongs to biology; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Margaret Buckingham to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Margaret Buckingham from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Margaret Buckingham, (born 2 March 1945) is a French-British developmental biologist working in the fields of myogenesis and cardiogenesis. She is an honorary professor at the Pasteur Institute in Paris and emeritus director in the Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS). She is a member of the European Molecular Biology Organization, the Academia Europaea and the French Academy of Sciences.

Biography Margaret Buckingham was educated in Scotland and at Oxford University where she obtained B.A., M.A. and D.Phil. degrees in Biochemistry. As a postdoc, she then joined François Gros at the Pasteur Institute in Paris where she subsequently pursued her scientific career. She is an honorary professor at the Pasteur Institute and emeritus director in the Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS). She is a member of the scientific council of the ERC and chairs the prize committee of the Lefoulon-Delalande Foundation for cardiovascular research. In 2013, she was awarded the gold medal of the CNRS. She is a member of the French Academy of sciences, a Fellow of the Royal Society of London/Edinburgh and an International member of the National Academy of Sciences USA. She is also a member of EMBO and of the Academia Europaea. She was a member of the scientific council of the ERC from 2016–2022. In addition to chairing the prize committee of the Lefoulon-Delalande Foundation, she also chairs the Pasteur Institute Ethics committee. She is currently a member of the scientific commission of the Institut Curie in Paris and of the scientific advisory board of the Human Developmental Biology Initiative in the UK. She has French and British nationality, and is married to Richard Buckingham (Editor-in-Chief of Biochimie, until December 2020), with three children.

Scientific research Margaret Buckingham is a developmental biologist who is interested in how naïve multipotent cells acquire tissue specificity during embryogenesis. She has studied both the formation of skeletal muscle and of the heart, using the tools of mouse molecular genetics to characterise cell behaviour and to identify the genes that govern cell fate choices. From pioneering research on the in vivo expression, structure and regulation of muscle genes, she and her lab went on to study the myogenic regulatory factors, showing that Myf5 is present before MyoD in the embryo and that in the absence of Myf5 and Mrf4, cells fail to form skeletal muscle and acquire other mesodermal cell fates. Characterisation of Myf5 enhancers revealed a direct role for Pax3 in their transcriptional activation at different sites of myogenesis. From genetic screens, they identified other Pax3 targets, demonstrating the central role of Pax3 in the gene regulatory network that leads to the onset of myogenesis in the embryo. They discovered a population of Pax3/Pax7-positive progenitors that are essential for foetal muscle development and showed that Pax-positive satellite cells associated with adult fibres constitute stem cells for muscle regeneration. They identified genes, including Pitx2/3, that affect the behaviour of these cells and showed that Myf5 mRNA, present in quiescent satellite cells is sequestered until these cells are activated after injury. Her main contribution to cardiogenesis is the identification of the second heart field (SHF) as a major source of cardiac progenitor cells that form specific regions of the heart. The behaviour of these cells is controlled by gene regulatory networks and signalling pathways, exemplified by the FGF10 gene. Retrospective clonal analysis complemented their work on the SHF and established a lineage tree for the myocardium, where the second lineage defines the SHF contribution whereas the first lineage contributes all the left ventricular myocardium. This analysis revealed the clonal relationships between different sublineages that contribute to both cardiac muscle at the poles of the heart and anterior skeletal muscles which are not under Pax3-control. In addition to its conceptual importance for cardiogenesis, this work also has biomedical implications for congenital heart malformations.

Awards and honours Member of the European Molecular Biology Organisation (EMBO), 1979 Prix Jaffé of the Académie des sciences, 1990 Member of the Academia Europaea, 1998 CNRS Silver Medal, 1999 Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur, 2002 Officier de l'Ordre National du Mérite, 2008 Lifetime Achievement Award of the American Society for Developmental Biology, 2010 Officier de la Légion d'honneur, 2011 International member of the National Academy of Sciences USA, 2011 Fellow of the Royal Society, 2013 CNRS Gold Medal, 2013 Commandeur de Ordre National du Mérite, 2013 Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, 2014 Commandeure de la Légion d'Honneur, 2018 Grand Officier of the Légion d’Honneur, 2023

References

External links Amsen, Eva (2011-01-25). "An interview with Margaret Buckingham: President of the French Society of Developmental Biology". Development. 138 (4). The Company of Biologists Ltd: 599–600. doi:10.1242/dev.060228. PMID 21266403.

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Margaret Buckingham

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Margaret Buckingham claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In biology, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Margaret Buckingham before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Margaret Buckingham ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Margaret Buckingham

In research: Margaret Buckingham appears in biology research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Margaret Buckingham in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Margaret Buckingham is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1945 births, 20th-century British biologists, 20th-century British women biologists, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Margaret Buckingham outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Margaret Buckingham in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Margaret Buckingham means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Margaret Buckingham out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Margaret Buckingham in simple terms?

Why does Margaret Buckingham matter?

Because it connects several biology ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Margaret Buckingham?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Margaret Buckingham.