User:Optimale/Denise Barlow

Denise P. Barlow (31 January 1950 – 21 October 2017) was a British geneticist who worked in the field of epigenomics. Barlow was an elected member of European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO), an honorary professor of genetics at the University of Vienna and receiver of the Erwin Schrödinger Prize of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. Her breakthrough was 1991 the discovery of the first mammalian imprinted gene, IGF2R, which codes for the insulin-like growth factor.

Early years
Denise Barlow was born in Yorkshire, UK on 31 January 1950. When she was sixteen she started a two year pre-nursing course at a technical college and when she was eighteen she trained and worked for four years as a state registered nurse (SRN) in the United Kingdom. During this time she decided to go to university to learn more about human physiology and diseases, but had first to attend another technical college to take A-levels.

Research work
At the age of twentyfive Barlow started to study at the University of Reading for a three year BSc Honors course in Zoology with Physiology and Biochemistry. After she finished Barlow found a PhD position at Warwick University supervised by Derek Burke researching the development of an interferon response to virus infections in mouse embryos. She obtained a PhD in the area of mouse developmental biology in 1981.

Barlow was invited by Brigid Hogan to work in her laboratory at the Imperial Cancer Research Fund Laboratories in London on isolating genes expressed in the very early stages of embryonic development. After Barlow met Hans Lehrach at a scientific meeting in Cold Spring Harbor she joined his laboratory at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany to use the techniques developed there to isolate mutated mouse genes.

In 1988 Barlow joined the newly founded Research Institute of Molecular Pathology (IMP) in Vienna where she worked as a group leader until 1996 and discovered 1991 the first imprinted gene in mice, IGF2R.

After her stay at the IMP Barlow moved 1995 to a group leader position at the Netherlands Cancer Institute in Amsterdam. She then continued her work at the Institute of Molecular Biology of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Salzburg.

In 2003, Barlow joined the Research Center for Molecular Medicine of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (CeMM) as a founding member, where she continued her epigenetic research as principal investigator until her retirement in 2015. 2014 she received for her lifetime achievments the Erwin Schröder Prize, worth 50.000 Euros, which was established 1958 and is the most prestigious award of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. The last published work of her former group described the first complete allelome, after her laboratory found the first imprented gene and discovered the first imprinted non-coding RNA which controls imprinted silencing

Barlow was appointed an European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) member in 1995 and has served since 1998 on the EMBO Science and Society Committee where she was appointed chairwoman of this committee since 2002. She was also an advocate for better opportunities for female scientists in leading positions at universities and research institutes.

Honors and Awards

 * Election as an EMBO member (1995)
 * Honorary professorship of genetics at the University of Vienna
 * Erwin Schrödinger Prize of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (2014)
 * EMBO/EMBL Austrian Chapter Achievement Award Medal (2014) for her lifetime achievements

Publications (selection)

 * A career in epigenetics. RNA Biology (2015)
 * Airn Transcriptional Overlap, But Not Its lncRNA Products, Induces Imprinted Igf2r Silencing. Science (Dec 2012)
 * Pulsed-field gel electrophoresis. Genome (Feb 2011)
 * The origins of genomic imprinting in mammals. Advances in Genetics (2002)
 * Competition - A common motif for the imprinting mechanism?. The EMBO journal (1998)
 * Gametic Imprinting in Mammals. Science (1996)
 * The mouse IGF-2 receptor is imprinted and closely linked to the Tme locus. Nature (1991)
 * ''Genetics by gel electrophoresis: the impact of pulsed field gel electrophoresis on mammalian genetics. Trends in Genetics (1987)
 * Interferon synthesis in the early post-implantation mouse embryo. Differentiation (1984)