Academy elects 16 new members

Internationally renowned molecular geneticist Dr Robin Holliday is among 16 Australian scientists elected this month to the Australian Academy of Science.

Holliday helped pioneer epigenetics -- the study of traits that are preferentially expressed in one or the other sex, in a non-Mendelian manner, as a result of processes such a methylation-induced gene silencing.

Born in the UK, Holliday was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1976. He subsequently emigrated to Australia, and worked with CSIRO, becoming an Australian citizen in 1989.

In a 1987 research paper, Holliday correctly predicted that methylation-induced silencing would prove to be an important mechanism in cancer. Oncologists are now developing prognostic tests for breast cancer, based on patterns of gene methylation in breast ductal tissues.

Former CSIRO microbial geneticist Dr Ruth Hall, now adjunct professor of molecular and microbial biosciences at the University of Sydney, has been elected to the Academy for her research into the mechanisms that allow antibiotic-resistant bacteria to disseminate their resistance genes.

Hall has long been an outspoken critic of the livestock industry's use of antibiotics as growth promoters, and in the 1990s, produced convincing evidence linking the practice with the emergence of deadly multi-resistant strains of bacteria in hospitals.

Prof Sam Berkovic, director of the Epilepsy Research Centre at Austin Health in Heidelberg, has been elected to the Academy for his pioneering work in the genetics of epilepsy. Berkovic and his colleagues have transformed medicine's understanding of epilepsy, by showing that epilepsy, in its many forms, is actually a highly heritable disorder, with highly variable expression. His team's clinical research has helped molecular geneticists identify a host of mutations in ion-channel genes, that disrupt normal brain function in epilepsy patients.

Prof Geoff McFadden, of Melbourne University's School of Botany, has been elected to the Academy for his research into the evolutionary origins of organelles such as mitochondria and chloroplasts in eukaryotic cells.

Prof McFadden made the remarkable discovery that the world's deadliest parasite, the malaria protozoan Plasmodium falciparum, probably evolved from a single-celled, dinoflagellate-like alga. He discovered that malaria parasites, along with distant relatives like Toxoplasma gondii and Cryptosporidium, posses an apicoplast -- a degenerate chloroplast that has lost its original photosynthetic function.

Neuroscientist Prof Trevor Lamb, of the Australian National University's John Curtin School of Medicine, and another FRS, has been elected to the Academy for his research into photoreceptors in the retina of the eye. He pioneered a technique for recording electrical activity from isolated photoreceptor cells.

CSIRO Plant Industry molecular geneticist Dr Jeff Ellis, head of the division's genetic engineering for plant improvement program, has been elected to the Academy for his research into the genes involved in plant resistance to fungus diseases. Ellis cloned the world's first rust-resistance gene from flax, and has made important contributions to understanding how the standard plant-gene vector Agrobacterium transforms plant genomes.