Berna Sozen, Ph.D., joins the Department of Genetics this fall as the prestigious Bohmfalk Scholar, which recognizes outstanding research and potential of junior faculty members in the Yale School of Medicine. Originally from Antalya, Turkey, Dr. Sozen was awarded a PhD fellowship and undertook her PhD research in the laboratory of Professor Magdalena Zernicka-Goetz at the University of Cambridge in 2015. She continued working as a post-doctoral researcher at Cambridge and at Caltech when the Zernicka-Goetz lab moved there in 2019.
Dr. Sozen quickly developed a fascination with embryogenesis in her undergraduate career. “In my earliest years,” she says, “I spent some time working at an IVF clinic, which became particularly influential as I began to appreciate two important factors that are essential to ensure a proper embryo development and thus a successful pregnancy: the embryo environment and maternal health.” Human embryos demonstrate remarkable adaptive plasticity, she explains, but these adaptations incur long-term costs on adult health. “Understanding this concept of plasticity has become a major interest of my research.”
Before arriving at Yale, Dr. Sozen’s work addressed major limitations to studying early embryos. “My research over the last several years has focused on developing 3-dimensional in vitro platforms to build embryo-like models from stem cells that can organically self-assemble and specify corresponding native lineages/tissues.” Such platforms are crucial because they capture the tissue specification and spatial architecture of the embryo.
Dr. Sozen says that she feels inspired by many persistent secrets in embryogenesis. “My lab will focus on unravelling the precise cellular and molecular mechanisms governing early mammalian embryogenesis, with a particular focus on links between early tissue patterning and metabolism, and the impacts these have on long-term health and disease,” she explains. “We will be exploring how embryos can survive even in suboptimal conditions by making adaptive changes at the genetic, epigenetic and cellular level, and how such changes can alter tissue and organ physiology irreversibly.”
The questions Dr. Sozen seeks to answer are significant both in their implications for human health as well as for the field of developmental biology. “Key events of embryo development are largely inaccessible to science because they occur in the darkness of the human uterus,” Sozen says. “By building up and breaking down these stem-cell-model-embryos, numerous black boxes regarding mammalian embryogenesis and the developmental origins of disease can be opened. This will show us some of the earliest events that occur during embryogenesis and may change the dogmatic views on our own development.”
Dr. Sozen says she is looking forward to the interdisciplinary environment of Yale. “I am excited to develop new relationships with excellent scientists, who can bring new perspectives to my work. I hope to combine my research on development, stem cells, and synthetic biology with focused genetics, epigenetics and translational biology.”
As a passionate photographer, Dr. Sozen will also be spending plenty of time in New Haven taking pictures. “Colors and patterns become dazzling behind the lens, and I always try to discover the beauty in everything. I think this makes me a better biologist.”