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A genome biologist from The University of Western Australia who developed advanced techniques to accurately map millions of DNA modifications throughout the genome has won the Australian Academy of Science's Ruth Stephens Gani Medal for 2014.

Professor Ryan Lister, a Future Fellow at the ARC Centre of Excellence in Plant Energy Biology at UWA, has been investigating the role of the epigenome throughout brain development and adulthood, focusing particularly on the major changes that occur in early childhood.

Professor Lister said the epigenome was like a layer of information superimposed upon the genome, which could control the way the underlying genetic information encoded in the DNA was expressed. Millions of small molecules that tagged on to the genome acted as signposts to tell a cell to turn on or off nearby genes, he said.

"We developed new genomics techniques that use large-scale DNA sequencing technologies to accurately map the exact location of these ‘epigenetic' modifications of the DNA throughout the entire genome, which can be several billion letters long, whereas previously people could only study very small snippets of the genome at once," Professor Lister said.

He said these new maps had revealed many surprises about the composition of the epigenome, how it varied in different tissues and cell types in the body, how it changed over development and how it was disrupted in disease.

Professor Lister and his collaborators at UWA and The Salk Institute for Biological Studies then decided to investigate the role of the epigenome throughout brain development and adulthood, focusing particularly on the dramatic changes that occur in early childhood. Their discoveries, published in the journal Science , provided exciting new insights into the influence of the epigenome on gene regulation during critical stages of childhood development.

It was this work which earned Professor Lister the Academy's Ruth Stephens Gani Medal, to be presented in May at "Science at the Shine Dome", an annual gathering of Australia's foremost scientists. The medal, one of the Australian Academy of Science's annual awards, recognises distinguished research in human genetics and honours the contribution to science in human cytogenetics by the late Ruth Stephens Gani .

"Our work represents a significant leap in the understanding of how and why DNA is modified along the genome and how these ‘epigenetic' modifications relate to normal and disease states in humans and plants," Professor Lister said.

The award was valuable because it helped promote the research he and his team at the Lister Lab were undertaking, he said.

"This is critical for getting young new scientists involved in this exciting and rapidly evolving field, for establishing new collaborations, and for communicating to the public the science that we are doing, why it's important, and how it may affect their lives," he said.

Professor Lister and his colleagues are now pursuing new lines of research into how the complex patterns of the epigenome are established and altered in normal and disease states, how the epigenome is altered by the surrounding environment, and how cells decide which genes to turn on or off.

"We're also developing new molecular tools to precisely and deliberately modify the epigenome in order to study its basic properties and to correct it when it is disturbed in states of disease or stress," he said.

The Ruth Stephens Gani Award is the second major prize in recent months for Professor Lister - he was also recognised as Western Australia's brightest young scientist in the Young Tall Poppy Awards, announced in November.

Media references

Professor Ryan Lister (ARC Centre of Excellence for Plant Energy Biology) (+61 8)  6488 4407

David Stacey (UWA Public Affairs) (+61 8)  6488 3229  /  (+61 4) 32 637 716