I have over 20 years’ experience of studying the regulation of gene expression in several biological systems. My PhD led to the first description of a system for large-scale production of proteins in vitro. This included a coupled transcription-translation system (four patents filed) and a replication-translation process (two patents filed) that have been licensed to Ambion and Promega and are used worldwide. It also led to me receiving the prestigious European Academia Prize in Medicine and Biology for young scientists in 1995 and in 2006 I was awarded a personal fellowship by The Austrian Research Council to conduct my research into RNA degradation at BOKU University, Vienna. Since then, I have worked at CNRS (France), Penn State University (USA) and the University of Liverpool. My research into gene expression systems during my tenure at the University of Liverpool resulted in the characterisation of a specific mechanism by which the nitrogen metabolite signalling pathways are controlled in A. nidulans as well as discovery a new regulatory pathway of gene expression. This work is of a global nature, will make a major contribution to refining models of gene expression and regulation.

The underlying mechanisms that dictate eukaryotic life, disease, and death are bound by the central dogma of molecular biology. Thus, regulation of gene expression is the result of the combined control of mRNA production and function. Improper regulation of gene expression can lead to many defects and disorders. Consequently, understanding the fundamental mechanisms of gene expression has become a dynamic subfield of genetic diseases and medicine. The aim of my research is to investigate the coordinated regulation of crucial cellular processes such as translation, mRNA modification, quality control, cellular compartmentalisation of RNA and decay. Isolation of research in these areas has left big gaps in our understanding into how all these events are linked to and regulate each other.