Basic & Clinical Genomics Laboratory - Professor Brian Morris

 

David Adams, a PhD student, won the Young Investigator Award for best oral presentation by a research student at High Blood Pressure Research Council of Australia conference for 3 years in a row: 1997, 1998, 1999 and also Award for best student talk at Annual Scientific Meeting of Australian Society for Medical Research in 1999. David also won travel awards to present his breakthrough molecular biology discoveries at the International Society of Hypertension Conference in Chicago in Aug 2000. He was also selected into a course at SUNY in New York on stem cell gene knockout technology, accompanied by a US scholarship to cover expenses. William Wang, MM student who has just graduated in 2000, was selected into the Advanced Statistical Genetics course at Cambridge in 1999, and in 2000 was selected for a prestigious scholarship to do his PhD at Cambridge, residing at Caius College. The Lab published a paper in the highly rated (IF = 9.3) journal Human Molecular Genetics in 2000 describing the identification of a gene for human hypertension by the novel technique of genome scanning. This and other work has implicated a gene involved in the immune/inflammatory system in cardiovascular disease. The Lab also elucidated a genetic basis for diabetic renal disease. As well a variant of the body's major steroid receptor was found to confer overweight on all who possessed it: this was published in the British Medical Journal in 1999. Other papers were published in the world's top hypertension journal: "Hypertension". These include a paper by Louise van der Weyden, who with David Adams, made the novel discovery of a purinergic control of the renin gene, and elucidated the mechanism by molecular biology techniques. Prof Morris published a svery big chapter a review of renin in the American Physiological Society's esteemed "Handbook of Physiology", as well as other chapters in books and abook to update the public and professionals of the message from evidence-based medicine "In Favour of Circumcision", and this topic continued to get media attention.