Alyson Ashe 43rd Lorne Genome Conference 2022

Alyson Ashe

Alyson completed her undergraduate degree in Molecular Biology and Genetics (Advanced) at the University of Sydney. After completing an Honours project investigating Anarchy in honeybees with Dr Ben Oldroyd, she decided that her real passion lay in the area of epigenetics – the interplay between the environment that an organism encounters during its lifetime and gene expression. Her PhD in genetics and epigenetics (with Dr Emma Whitelaw) was also through the University of Sydney, but she spent a couple of years at Queensland Institute of Medical Research when the lab relocated. After a few years in Brisbane, she moved over to Cambridge, UK, where she spent four and a half years as a postdoctoral research fellow in the lab of Dr Eric Miska, with a Herchel-Smith postdoctoral fellowship. Here she brought her love of epigenetics to a new model organism – the nematode worm Caenorhabditis elegans – and established a robust assay for studying transgenerational epigenetic inheritance. She also learnt all about the weird and wonderful world of small RNA molecules, and dabbled in the anti-viral innate immune response. Alyson moved back to the University of Sydney in 2014 on an ARC DECRA fellowship where she established her own lab where she studies the molecular mechanisms by which epigenetic signals are passed between generations. She was subsequently awarded an ARC Future Fellowship, and is now an Associate Professor in the School of Life and Environmental Sciences.