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UWA's Professor Ryan Lister has just won the Prime Minister's Life Scientist of the Year Award. The outstanding genome biologist is working at the frontier of science, unravelling the epigenome.

"Standing on the shoulders of giants," is a familiar acknowledgement at science award ceremonies, as scientists pay tribute to earlier ground-breaking work that made their own discoveries possible.

UWA's Professor Ryan Lister - who added the Ruth Stephens Gani Medal from the Australian Academy of Sciences to his Tall Poppy Award - points to the Salk Institute's scientist Joseph Ecker for sparking his interest in epigenetics.

In turn, Dr Ecker has acknowledged ‘the father of modern genetics', Gregor Mendel, a 19th century Augustinian monk who first documented the inherited traits of pea plants in his secluded monastery garden.

Not having the patience of a monk, Dr Ecker fast-tracked his research using gene sequencing technology. Decoding the 25,000-odd genes of the mustard weed Arabidopsis thaliana, he turned this humble plant into the gold standard of plant research around the world.

As a PhD student at UWA, Ryan Lister followed Dr Ecker's astonishing progress while completing his thesis on mitochondria, the energy factories in cells. He approached the US scientist, and was awarded a prestigious Human Frontier Science Program Fellowship in 2006. This took him to the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California, and to Ecker's Genome Analysis Laboratory.

"Much of biological science is driven by technology, and Joe's research group was always on the bleeding edge of technology. We got early access to one of the first of a new generation of DNA sequencers in 2007 - we could sequence DNA faster and cheaper, and do experiments that were impossible only a year or two earlier," says the graduate.

"By pushing the new DNA sequencing technology to its limits, we were able to pursue lines of research that were never before possible - and that's a strategy that I try to continue in my laboratory at UWA."

Professor Lister has developed new techniques that use large-scale DNA sequencing technologies to accurately map the molecular tags added to the DNA that turns genes on or off, throughout the entire genome and at unprecedented resolution. This area of research, epigenomics, is providing great leaps forward in our understanding of the workings of human and plant genomes and cells, and it promises significant advances in human health, regenerative medicine, and agriculture.

"Essentially, every cell in the body of an animal or plant contains the same genome sequence. Yet despite these carbon copy DNA sequences, the cells display astounding variation in form and function.

"One way a cell can turn particular genes on or off is by adding tiny chemical tags to the DNA, like molecular signposts that signal stop or go. We now have the technology to map exactly where all these tags are located throughout the genome, to produce a map termed the epigenome."

Professor Lister divides his time between the Lister Lab and the ARC Centre of Excellence in Plant Energy Biology, a collaboration involving UWA, the Australian National University, the University of Adelaide and La Trobe. The Centre has earned a worldwide reputation for its research.

It was Professor Lister's work on discovering and mapping the large-scale reconfiguration of the epigenome during brain development in humans that won him the Academy of Science medal.

"We're also doing plant epigenome research at the Centre of Excellence, looking at its involvement in plant growth, cellular identity and function. And in both plant and human systems we're developing new molecular tools to try to precisely engineer the epigenome, which has not been possible in the past.

"In my lab we're working on the mustard weed and rice in some projects and on human and mice cells in others, to look at how the epigenome has changed throughout evolutionary time. We can now vault the species divide - with new DNA reading and writing technologies we're seeing those old discipline borders dissolve - and as the cost of DNA sequencing and synthesis falls, so the science pushes towards new frontiers.

"It's really exciting working in this area. There's a real buzz in my lab among undergraduate, graduate and postdoc researchers because we're conscious that things are changing fast, and it's a challenge just keeping up! There's no routine, and that appeals to young researchers.

"Genome biology is undergoing a revolution based on these technological advances, and it really is going to change the world. There are countless questions to be asked and problems to be solved - so the best and brightest will want to be involved!"