Kamryn Gerner-Mauro, Ph.D.

Kamryn earned her B.S. in Biology from St. Edward’s University in 2017. Before her Ph.D. studies, Kamryn worked as a Research Assistant I at MD Anderson Cancer Center, where she researched the specification of lung epithelial progenitors. Kamryn obtained her Ph.D. from Baylor College of Medicine in 2025, completing her dissertation on a cross-species analysis of lung epithelial progenitors. To date, she has received numerous awards for her microscopy work and discovered a novel epithelial cell type within the chicken lung. With a longstanding scientific interest in progenitor cell specification and fate maintenance, Kamryn joined the Poché lab to investigate cranial neural crest cell development and differentiation into the craniofacial skeleton.

Publications

1.     Tiffany Chern, Xuefei Tong, William G. Bauer, David J. Quispe-Parra, Kamryn N. Gerner-Mauro, and Ross A. Poché. New genetic tools to define the pathophysiology of inborn errors of cobalamin metabolism impacting mammalian development. Differentiation 2025. doi: 10.1016/j.diff.2025.100868

2.     Kamryn N. Gerner-Mauro, Lisandra Vila Ellis, Guolun Wang, Richa Nayak, Peter Y. Lwigale, Ross A. Poché, Jichao Chen. Morphogenic, molecular, and cellular adaptations for unidirectional airflow in the chicken lung. Development 2025. doi: https://doi.org/10.1242/dev.204346

 3.     Adrian Romero, Brandy L. Walker, Vanja Krneta-Stankic, Kamryn Gerner-Mauro, Lydia Youmans, Rachel K. Miller. The dynamics of tubulogenesis in development and disease. Development 2025. doi: 10.1242/dev.202820

4.     Ying Lyu, Soo Jin Kim, Ericka S. Humphrey, Richa Nayak, Yinglu Guan, Qingnan Liang, Kun Hee Kim, Yukun Tan, Jinzhuang Dou, Huandong Sun, Xingzhi Song, Priyadharsini Nagarajan, Kamryn N. Gerner-Mauro, Kevin Jin, Virginia Liu, Rehman H. Hassan, Miranda L. Johnson, Lisa P. Deliu, Yun You, Anurag Sharma, H. Amalia Pasolli, Yue Lu, Jianhua Zhang, Vakul Mohanty, Ken Chen, Youn Joo Yang, Taiping Chen, Yejing Ge. Stem cell activity-coupled suppression of endogenous retrovirus governs adult tissue regeneration. Cell 2024. doi: 10.1016/j.cell.2024.10.007

5.     Kamryn N. Gerner-Mauro, Haruhiko Akiyama, and Jichao Chen. Redundant and additive functions of the four Lef/Tcf transcription factors in lung epithelial progenitors. PNAS 2020. doi:10.1073/pnas.2002082117 

6.     Danielle R. Little, Kamryn N. Gerner-Mauro, Per Flodby, Edward D. Crandall, Zea Borok, Haruhiko Akiyamad, Shioko Kimura, Edwin J. Ostrin, and Jichao Chen. Transcriptional control of lung alveolar type 1 cell development and maintenance by NK homeobox 2-1. PNAS 2019. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1906663116 (cover article)

7.     Edwin J. Ostrin, Danielle R. Little, Kamryn N. Gerner-Mauro, Elizabeth A. Sumner, Ricardo Ríos-Corzo, Elizabeth Ambrosio, Samantha E. Holt, Nicolas Forcioli-Conti, Haruhiko Akiyama, Sam M. Hanash, Shioko Kimura, Sarah X. L Huang, Jichao Chen. β-Catenin maintains lung epithelial progenitors after lung specification. Development 2018. doi: 10.1242/dev.160788 (cover article)