Citation | Philip Ingham has made major contributions to the understanding of Drosophila development. His pioneering work on the elucidation of the hedgehog signalling pathway in Drosophila has underpinned the analysis of this important family of signalling molecules in vertebrate development and human disease. He identified and characterised the two sub?units of the Hedgehog receptor, Patched and Smoothened, and in 1993, in collaboration with A McMahon and C Tabin, isolated the first hedgehog family genes from vertebrates, providing the first evidence for the role of Shh in neural tube patterning. Other achievements include characterisation of the trithorax gene in Drosophila, the prototype of a class of transcriptional activators of homeotic genes, and elucidation of the role of pair rule genes in translating gap?protein gradients in the Drosophila blastoderm into the metameric pattern of the final body plan |