2001 ASBMB Fellowship: Anthea Newton

Newton I am often asked how a country girl who spent her youth dodging cow pats and getting into mischief (I'm proud to say that I don't have a criminal record), currently finds herself pursuing a PhD in the area of transcription regulation. My mother has learned not to ask, just to be grateful.

Having left school at the end of year ten, I never considered a tertiary education as part of my life plan but in 1993, circumstances changed and I felt I needed to further my education. You cannot get into university with only a School Certificate, so thanks to TAFE NSW, I finally commenced my Science degree in 1995 at the University of Sydney, where my cow pat training came in handy for dodging all those students (not lectures!). I was fortunate to be offered an Honours position in Merlin Crossley's lab, where my research focussed on identifying protein partners for the transcriptional co-regulator CREB-binding protein (CBP). Merlin introduced me to an old friend of his, GATA-1, when I commenced my PhD candidature the following year. GATA-1 is a transcription factor critical for red blood cell development. This is evidenced by the report that four mutations all occurring in the N-terminal zinc finger domain of GATA-1 result in platelet abnormalities and, in two instances, the further complication of anaemia. My studies have involved looking at the N-finger which is believed to be primarily involved in facilitating protein-protein interactions, but my work has shown that the N-finger can also bind naturally occurring DNA elements.

Being awarded the ASBMB Fellowship will help me to present this work at the Cold Spring Harbor conference entitled "Mechanisms of Eukaryotic Transcription". My only travel experiences to date are New Guinea and New Zealand, which is not bad for a girl from New South Wales, but New York (I think there is a trend there!) will be a whole new experience. I suppose the next question to be answered is will I survive, and will my non-criminal record be intact? Only time will tell!

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This page last modified: October 10, 2008.