Chances are that you have never heard of Platynereis dumerilii, a marine worm that is used as a model to study early developmental processes. However, this is the organism that Dr. Margaret (Maggie) Pruitt had chosen as her next stepping-stone in her research career in Stephan Schneider’s laboratory after completing her PhD in 2012 in the MCDB program in Clark Coffman’s laboratory.

In August of 2012, Dr. Pruitt joined the Schneider laboratory as a Postdoctoral Researcher studying Wnt/beta-catenin signaling in Platynereis. What an adventure it has been! Within this short time period, she has made outstanding progress in her research and has trained undergraduate researchers.

In 2013, she received a Travel Fellowship from the Society for Developmental Biology to present her research at the17th International Congress of Developmental Biology in Cancun, Mexico. More recently she received a Travel Research Fellowship from the Journal ‘Development’ to learn new techniques in Professor Detlev Arendt’s laboratory at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany. You can read about her experience at EMBL here where she describes learning to inject Platynereis embryos.

Dr. Pruitt was also invited to contribute to the Lab Life section of the community site ‘the NODE’ of the Journal ‘Development’. If you are curious about the marine worm Platynereis and a day in the life of a Platynereis researcher, check out Dr. Pruitt’s most recent post.