Aoife McLysaght is an Irish geneticist and a professor in the Molecular Evolution Laboratory of the Smurfit Institute of Genetics, Trinity College Dublin in Ireland.[1][3][4][5]

Aoife McLysaght
Alma materTrinity College Dublin (BA, PhD)
Awards
Scientific career
Fields
InstitutionsTrinity College Dublin
University of California, Irvine
ThesisEvolution of vertebrate genome organisation (2002)
Doctoral advisorKenneth H. Wolfe[2]
Websitewww.gen.tcd.ie/molevol

Education edit

McLysaght was educated at the Trinity College Dublin where she was awarded a Bachelor of Arts degree in Genetics in 1998, followed by a PhD in 2002 for research supervised by Kenneth H. Wolfe on the evolution of vertebrate genome organisation.[2][6][7][8]

Career and research edit

Following her PhD, she completed postdoctoral research at the University of California, Irvine[9] working with Brandon Gaut before returning to work in Dublin in 2003. Her research in molecular evolution and comparative genomics[1] has been published in leading peer-reviewed scientific journals including Nature,[10] Nature Genetics,[11] Bioinformatics,[12] Genome Research,[13] PNAS[14][15] and the journal Yeast.[16]

She has served as senior editor and associate editor for the journals Molecular Biology and Evolution and Genome Biology and Evolution, and is on the editorial board of the journal Cell Reports. She is a member of the Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution (SMBE) and The Genetics Society.[citation needed] She served as Treasurer of SMBE 2012–14 and was elected President of the Society in 2017.[17]

Outreach and media edit

McLysaght is a regular contributor to public events, and has spoken at IGNITE Electric Picnic,[18][19] TEDx, The Royal Institution, and on the BBC Radio 4 programme The Infinite Monkey Cage.[20] She brought genetics to a wider audience in the Royal Institution 2013 advent calendar[9] where she featured in videos on human chromosome 1,[21] human chromosome 14,[22] mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA)[23] and the Science Gallery, Dublin. In 2018 she joined with Alice Roberts to write and present the televised Royal Institution Christmas Lectures.[24]

Awards and honours edit

McLysaght was awarded European Research Council (ERC) Consolidator Grant 2018–23 and an ERC Starting Researcher grant from 2013 to 2018, and the President of Ireland Young Researcher's Award by Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) in 2005.[25][26] She gave the J. B. S. Haldane lecture of The Genetics Society in 2016.[27] She was one of eight women scientists whose portrait was commissioned as part of the Royal Irish Academy's Women on Walls project.[28]

In 2010 she was elected a fellow of Trinity College Dublin.[29]

Personal life edit

McLysaght is a granddaughter of genealogist Edward MacLysaght.[30] McLysaght has two children, and a dog whose genome has been sequenced.[31]

References edit

  1. ^ a b c d Aoife McLysaght publications indexed by Google Scholar  
  2. ^ a b McLysaght, Aoife (2002). Evolution of vertebrate genome organisation (PDF) (PhD thesis). Trinity College Dublin. OCLC 842498402. Archived from the original (PDF) on 6 November 2017.
  3. ^ Aoife McLysaght publications indexed by the Scopus bibliographic database. (subscription required)
  4. ^ Aoife McLysaght at DBLP Bibliography Server  
  5. ^ Aoife McLysaght publications from Europe PubMed Central
  6. ^ Aoife McLysaght's ORCID 0000-0003-2552-6220
  7. ^ Wolfe, Ken (2017). "Wolfe lab alumni". wolfe.ucd.ie. Archived from the original on 11 July 2017.
  8. ^ "Aoife McLysaght Academic Tree". academictree.org.
  9. ^ a b O’Connell, Claire (2014). "Professor brings science to life with flair". siliconrepublic.com.
  10. ^ Lander, Eric S.; Linton, Lauren M.; Birren, Bruce; Nusbaum, Chad; Zody, Michael C.; Baldwin, Jennifer; Devon, Keri; Dewar, Ken; Doyle, Michael; FitzHugh, William; Funke, Roel; et al. (2001). "Initial sequencing and analysis of the human genome". Nature. 409 (6822): 860–921. doi:10.1038/35057062. hdl:2027.42/62798. ISSN 0028-0836. PMID 11237011.  
  11. ^ McLysaght, Aoife; Hokamp, Karsten; Wolfe, Kenneth H. (2002). "Extensive genomic duplication during early chordate evolution". Nature Genetics. 31 (2): 200–204. doi:10.1038/ng884. ISSN 1061-4036. PMID 12032567. S2CID 8263376.  
  12. ^ Pollastri, G.; McLysaght, A. (2004). "Porter: a new, accurate server for protein secondary structure prediction" (PDF). Bioinformatics. 21 (8): 1719–1720. doi:10.1093/bioinformatics/bti203. ISSN 1367-4803. PMID 15585524.
  13. ^ Knowles, D. G.; McLysaght, A. (2009). "Recent de novo origin of human protein-coding genes". Genome Research. 19 (10): 1752–1759. doi:10.1101/gr.095026.109. ISSN 1088-9051. PMC 2765279. PMID 19726446.
  14. ^ McLysaght, A.; Baldi, P. F.; Gaut, B. S. (2003). "Extensive gene gain associated with adaptive evolution of poxviruses". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 100 (26): 15655–15660. doi:10.1073/pnas.2136653100. ISSN 0027-8424. PMC 307623. PMID 14660798.
  15. ^ Makino, T.; McLysaght, A. (2010). "Ohnologs in the human genome are dosage balanced and frequently associated with disease". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 107 (20): 9270–9274. doi:10.1073/pnas.0914697107. ISSN 0027-8424. PMC 2889102. PMID 20439718.
  16. ^ McLysaght, Aoife; Enright, Anton J.; Skrabanek, Lucy; Wolfe, Kenneth H. (2000). "Estimation of Synteny Conservation and Genome Compaction Between Pufferfish (Fugu) and Human". Yeast. 1 (1): 22–36. doi:10.1002/(SICI)1097-0061(200004)17:1<22::AID-YEA5>3.0.CO;2-S. ISSN 0749-503X. PMC 2447035. PMID 10797599.
  17. ^ "SMBE Council". smbe.org. Society for Molecular Biology & Evolution. 2019. Retrieved 21 January 2019.
  18. ^ "Aoife McLysaght at IGNITE Dublin #1". youtube.com. YouTube.
  19. ^ "Aoife McLysaght at IGNITE at Electric Picnic". youtube.com. YouTube.
  20. ^ "Alfred Russel Wallace: The Infinite Monkey Cage, Series 8 Episode 5 of 6". bbc.co.uk. BBC.
  21. ^ "Chromosome 1 – The Stuff of Life". youtube.com. YouTube.
  22. ^ "Chromosome 14 – Immunoglobulins: building our immune system". youtube.com. YouTube.
  23. ^ "Chromosome 24 – mtDNA, Lynn Margulis and the mitochondrial DNA". youtube.com. YouTube.
  24. ^ "CHRISTMAS LECTURES 2018: Who am I?". rigb.org. Royal Institution. Archived from the original on 23 October 2019. Retrieved 27 December 2018.
  25. ^ "Professor Aoife Mclysaght". accenture.com. Accenture.
  26. ^ "Trinity Research: Professor Aoife McLysaght". tcd.ie.
  27. ^ "JBS Haldane Lecture – Genetics Society". genetics.org.uk.
  28. ^ "Women on Walls". www.ria.ie. Royal Irish Academy. 2016. Retrieved 26 December 2020.
  29. ^ "Trinity Monday 2010 - Fellows and Scholars". www.tcd.ie. Trinity College Dublin. 12 April 2010. Retrieved 1 July 2023.
  30. ^ McLysaght, Aoife (2014). "The genetic imprint of Niall of the Nine Hostages". irishtimes.com. The Irish Times.
  31. ^ "Cara Genome Project (@CaraGenome) | Twitter". twitter.com.