Edward Michael De Robertis (born June 6, 1947) is an American embryologist and Professor at the University of California, Los Angeles.

[3] He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2013, worked for the Howard Hughes Medical Institute for 26 years, and holds a Distinguished Professor at the University of California, Los Angeles.

[8][9] De Robertis' postdoctoral training (1974-1977) was with Nobel laureate Sir John Gurdon at the Medical Research Council in Cambridge England.

The finding that Hox genes are conserved in both vertebrates and fruit flies heralded the beginning of the nascent scientific field of Evolution and Development, or Evo-Devo.

[24][25][26][27] In most bilateral species, such as fruit flies, spiders, early chordates, and mammals, this flow of growth factors dictates dorsal (back) to ventral (belly) cell and tissue differentiation.