Renee Reijo Pera
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The Modern Laboratory
Renee Reijo Pera
A biologist of human beginnings, from the genes that make sperm to the first divisions of the embryo.
From Wisconsin to Cornell. Renee Reijo Pera grew up in Iron River, Wisconsin. She studied biology at the University of Wisconsin-Superior, earned a master's degree in entomology at Kansas State University, and received her doctorate from Cornell University in 1993, studying cell division in yeast.
Genes for fertility. As a postdoctoral researcher at the Whitehead Institute, in David Page's laboratory, she mapped deletions on the Y chromosome in men who made few or no sperm. Their 1995 paper in Nature Genetics described a new gene within these deletions, which they named DAZ. She moved to the University of California, San Francisco in 1997 and to Stanford University in 2007, where she held the George D. Smith professorship and directed its Center for Human Embryonic Stem Cell Research and Education. In 2009 her group showed in Nature that the genes DAZL, DAZ and BOULE help human stem cells form germ cells.
Watching embryos. In 2010 she was senior author, with Connie Wong and colleagues, of the Nature Biotechnology study that linked time-lapse films of early embryos with gene activity. Three timings measured by day 2 predicted which embryos would reach the blastocyst stage. “It completely surprised me that we could predict embryonic fate so well and so early,” she said at the time. The work was named one of TIME magazine's top ten medical breakthroughs of 2010, and it became the basis of a company she co-founded.
Later roles. She later served as vice president for research at Montana State University and at California Polytechnic State University. She now leads the Weissman Hood Institute at Touro University in Great Falls, Montana, and directs a National Institutes of Health centre of excellence there. She has been elected to the National Academy of Inventors.
Also see: Connie C. Wong
About the sources
- Touro College of Osteopathic Medicine, Montana: faculty page "Renee Reijo Pera, PhD", opened 7 October 2026.
- Wikipedia, "Renee Reijo Pera" (early life, degrees, Whitehead postdoc, UCSF 1997, Stanford 2007, Montana State 2014, Cal Poly 2019).
- Stanford University Medical Center news release, "Researchers identify ways to predict embryonic developmental success", via ScienceDaily, 4 October 2010.
- The Stanford Daily, "Stanford researchers make early predictions on fate of embryos", October 2010.
- Wong CC, Loewke KE, Bossert NL, Behr B, De Jonge CJ, Baer TM, Reijo Pera RA. Non-invasive imaging of human embryos before embryonic genome activation predicts development to the blastocyst stage. Nature Biotechnology 2010;28(10):1115–1121. PubMed 20890283.
- Kee K, Angeles VT, Flores M, Nguyen HN, Reijo Pera RA. Human DAZL, DAZ and BOULE genes modulate primordial germ-cell and haploid gamete formation. Nature 2009;462:222–225. PubMed 19865085.
- Reijo R, Lee TY, Salo P, Alagappan R, et al., Page DC. Diverse spermatogenic defects in humans caused by Y chromosome deletions encompassing a novel RNA-binding protein gene. Nature Genetics 1995;10:383–393. PubMed 7670487.
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Compiled with AI-assisted research and checked against the original sources. Not yet peer-reviewed. Corrections are warmly welcomed.
