Thursday, May 8, 2025

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Overview

Chair: Professor Marnie Blewitt

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Details

Marnie Blewitt is the Acting Deputy Director of WEHI, and a NHMRC Leadership fellow. Marnie’s lab focuses on understanding the mechanisms of epigenetic control, and how such mechanisms can be manipulated in the context of disease. She uses functional genetic screens to identify epigenetic regulators, which she started as a PhD student with Emma Whitelaw at The University of Sydney (2005). Marnie took up a NHMRC Post- doctoral fellowship with Doug Hilton at WEHI in 2005 to work on the novel protein SMCHD1 that she identified in her PhD. In 2010, Marnie established her lab at WEHI, and in 2017 became a Division head, leading a group of labs focused on gene regulation. Her lab works on the fundamentals of epigenetic silencing alongside targeting epigenetic regulators for the treatment of rare diseases. The highlight awards Marnie’s work has attracted are the Australian Academy of Sciences Ruth Stephens Gani medal (2009) and more recently the 2024 Biochemical Society International Prize.