Dr Caitlin McQueen

Caitlin teaches a range of modules across the undergraduate BSc and MSc Biotechnology and MSc Stem Cells and Regenerative Medicine courses at UCS. She is module lead for MD5001 Biology of Disease, MD5008 Cell Signalling, MD5015 Metabolism, MD6001 Research Dissertation, MD6002 Gene Regulation, MD7028 Stem Cell Theory and Practice, MD7029 Tissue Formation and Regeneration and MD7817 Emerging Molecular Therapies in Medicine.
Caitlin is the programme lead for the MSc Stem Cells and Regenerative Medicine and BSc Medical Science courses.

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Caitlin’s research interests are focused within the field of developmental biology and embryology, with particular interest in regulation of muscle differentiation and patterning, limb development and the regulation of developmental timing.
Caitlin completed her undergraduate at the University of York in 2014. She remained at York whilst completing her thesis entitled “Investigating the coordinated transcriptional networks regulating Xenopus myogenesis” receiving her doctorate in 2018. Within this project, she utilised in vivo spatial analyses such as in situ hybridisation alongside high-throughput transcriptomic analyses (RNA-Seq, custom microarrays) to investigate novel roles of RNA Polymerase III isoforms during development and their regulation of both RNA Polymerase III transcripts and muscle-related gene expression (McQueen & Pownall, 2017; McQueen et al., 2019).

Caitlin then moved to the University of Sheffield to study limb development and patterning (McQueen & Towers, 2020). Here she carried out research for a number of projects, including investigating the role of Shh signalling in regulating the specification of evolutionarily conserved flight feathers during development (Busby et al., 2020) , detailed 3D mapping of limb neuromuscular networks and more recently, developed an ex vivo culture system to investigate the ability of limb cells to maintain developmental timing in the absence of cues from the wider embryo. This work established a transient role for Fgf signalling in establishing limb distal patterning events but revealed that it is dispensable for its maintenance leading to the most recent co-first authorship publication (Sedas Perez et al., 2023).

Caitlin is currently running projects encompassing both of these topics, investigating the role of RNA Polymerase III transcription in driving development of the vertebrate limb and musculoskeletal system. Her work in developmental biology has also applied well to investigation of germ layer specification during embryogenesis.

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