New England Biosciences Society’s Outstanding Student Award

The award was presented at the 2015 New England Bioscience Society Annual Conference held May 16 at Harvard Medical School where Rhee presented his research findings “Loss of YY1 from the Murine Endoderm Reveals a VEGF-dependent Paracrine Signaling Mechanism Required to Maintain the Liver Bud in a Temporally and Spatially Distinct”.

Rhee has been working with Dr. Tremblay since 2009. He has focused on investigating the developmental role of Yy1 (Yin-Yang 1) during early liver development. During this project he uncovered two important findings. It was previously believed that the early embryonic liver, called the liver bud, is comprised of homogenous population of liver precursors, termed hepatoblasts.  Rhee found that the early liver bud is composed of two morphologically and molecularly distinct hepatoblast populations that each contributes differently to the early liver lobes. Secondly, Rhee found that YY1 is required for VEGF production during normal early liver development. The requirement for VEGF in one hepatoblast population but not in the other also strongly supports his two hepatoblast model. Rhee believes these results will help developmental biologists to fully understand liver development and provide important information for the stem cell biologists who want to generate functional hepatocytes.

When asked about the award Rhee said, “I am honored by the award itself as NEBS is the one of the largest associations in the US (run by Korean scientists and supported by the Korean government and many bioscience companies) but the chance to present my research during my graduate program in front of my colleagues was more meaningful to me.  I would like to thank Dr. Tremblay deeply because I would not have completed my project successfully without her mentoring and patience.”

After completing his Ph.D., Rhee will join Dr. Red-Horse's lab at Stanford University this September where he will study cardiovascular development, focusing on coronary vessel maturation using mouse genetics and 3D visualization.