Nobuyo Maeda

Maeda has worked in the United States since 1978; as of 2017, she is the Robert H. Wagner Distinguished Professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

[4] Maeda's early work on sea snake venoms led to an interest in molecular evolution, which she pursued in Fitch's laboratory.

[5] Her work focused on the large mutational effects of recombination between members of multigene families, particularly in the human haptoglobin gene cluster.

[6][7] Maeda then started to apply gene targeting to elucidate the function of lipoproteins, which had been shown by Jan and Judith Rapacz to be associated with atherosclerosis in domestic pigs.

[10] Maeda and her coworkers found that deleting the mouse gene for apolipoprotein E (ApoE) – a component of very low-density lipoprotein – caused the animals to develop elevated blood cholesterol levels and atherosclerosis within around 6 months, on a normal diet.