Distinguished Professor and Vice Chancellor’s Fellow, Jenny Graves, certainly needs no introduction.
A giant in the field of genomic and epigenetic research, Professor Graves has made seminal contributions to our understanding of mammalian genome organisation and evolution.
“My work explores our distant relationship to Australia’s unique animals to discover how genes and chromosomes evolved, and how they work in all animals including humans.”
“I use this unique perspective to explore how sex works and how it evolved, as well as how sex chromosomes that are different in males and females compensate for the different dosages of genes they bear,” she explains.
Through her study of kangaroos, platypus, dragons and Tasmanian devils, Professor Graves has made fundamental discoveries including how the X chromosome is genetically silenced in female mammals, and that the Y chromosome is decaying and could ‘self-destruct’ in a few million years.
“Genome sequencing is allowing us to tackle some age-old questions in biology. For example, what genes are involved in sex determination and how does the environment interact with sex determining genes?”
To answer these questions, Professor Graves is currently studying sex determination in lizards and sex chromosomes in platypus.
“My present work, which is a collaboration with the University of Canberra, is looking at lizards that undergo sex reversal at high temperatures. This research is unpicking how genes can be overwritten by the environment.”
“I am also working with a team at the University of Adelaide to investigate platypus sex chromosomes. This research aims to discover how the sex chromosome system changed from an ancestral system to our present XY system in humans and other mammals,” Professor Graves says.
Professor Graves has been involved in international comparative gene mapping and sequencing projects since the mid-1980s.
She initiated projects to sequence the genomes of marsupials and the platypus and is part of a collaboration that will soon publish the genome of the bilby in Nature Ecology and Evolution.
Professor Graves has been the recipient of many prizes over her 50-year career, including the Prime Minister’s Prize for Science in 2027 and the L’Oreal UNESCO International Prize for Women in Science in 2006.
