Professor Ian Dawes
- Position: Scientia Professor
- Room: 202, Biological Sciences
- Phone: (+61 2) 9385 2089
- Fax: (+61 2) 9385 1483
- email: i.dawes@unsw.edu.au
Professional Experience
- 1969-70: Oxford University. Guinness Research Fellow and Junior Research Fellow
- 1970-7: Univ of Wisconsin, Madison. Postdoctoral Fellow, Arthritis Foundation
- 1971-1972: Brandeis University, Massachusetts. Postdoctoral Fellow, Arthritis Found
- 1972-1988: University of Edinburgh. Lecturer 1972-1987 and Reader 1988
- 1989-School of Biochemistry, UNSW. Professor of Genetics
- 1991-1996: Head, School of Biochemistry & Molecular Genetics, UNSW
- 1998 Visiting Professor, University of Salzburg, Austria
- Associate Dean Research, Faculty of Life Sciences, UNSW
- 2000 -Director Ramaciotti Centre for Gene Function Analysis, UNSW
Research Contribution
Response of eukaryotic organisms to oxidative stress and ageing. He was a pioneer in the field of yeast responses to oxidative stress demonstrating that yeast cells have inducible responses to peroxides, free-radicals and lipid peroxides and showing the cellular role of glutathione using mutants affected in glutathione metabolism. His group also showed cells arrest in the cell cycle in response to oxidant damage; in G2 in response to H2O2, and in G1 in response to superoxide anion or lipid hydroperoxides. They identified the entire set of yeast genes involved in responses of cells to five different oxidants, providing an extremely detailed view of how particular cell systems function in the cellular defense, repair and survival mechanisms. Genes involved in signalling oxidative damage to cell cycle control have been identified, together with those involved in adaptive responses to reactive oxygen species. In collaboration with Prof Breitenbach he has shown cell ageing in yeast is affected by oxidative stress, and aged cells undergo a program of programmed cell death.
Molecular analysis of control of one-carbon and folate metabolism in yeast. Prof Dawes has also made a major contribution to understanding how cells control one-carbon metabolism in yeast. This elucidated the molecular basis of how 1-C metabolism is regulated, how cells control the flow of metabolites from the major 1-C donors (serine, glycine and formate) to the products and how the metabolic steps are modulated between the cytoplasm and the mitochondrion. This integrated the role of different controls at the level of gene expression as well as enzyme activity.
Molecular mechanisms involved in initiation and timing of cell development. He showed for sporulation in Bacillus subtilis and Saccharomyces cerevisiae that: cell development can only be initiated at a particular stage in the cell cycle; development can only be initiated in cells that have attained a particular size; and that genes are expressed in a sequential way during meiotic development. He determined molecular mechanisms controlling sequential gene expression by cloning and characterising promoters and analysing regulation of several sporulation-specific genes. This identified a control motif in meiotically activated genes which is responsible for one of the main switching events during meiotic development.
Honours & Awards
- Fellow Australian Academy Sciences
- Rhodes Scholarship (NSW 1966)
- Scientia Professorship, UNSW (2001- ), ARC Professorial Fellowship (2003- )
- Chairman of the International Conferences on Yeast Genetics and Molecular Biology
- President Lorne Genome Conference Inc. (1997-2000) and Board member (2000-)
- President, Society for Free Radical Research (Australasia) (2004-5)
- President-elect, Australian Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (2008)
- Editor: Microbiological Sciences (1984-88), Member of Editorial Boards: J Gen Microbiol; Yeast ; Mol Microbiol; FEMS Yeast Res; J Microbiol.
- Member: Victor Chang Cardiac Research Institute; Australian Proteome Facility; Scientific Advisory Board AGRF; ARC Centre of Excellence in Plant Energy Biology; ARC Molecular and Cellular Biology Grant Review Panel; ARC Research Grants Committee; EC Biotechnology Project Grant Evaluation Committees; Deputy Chair of ARC Biological Sciences Large Grants Panel; Deputy Director of CRC for Food Industry Innovation Member
Active Research Projects
- How Do Cells Regulate Redox Environment at the Cellular and Organellar Level?
- Integration of Cellular Gene Regulation Processes
- Oxidative Stress Sensing and Cell Cycle Control
- Redox Homeostasis, Oxidative Stress, Cell Degeneration and Ageing
Publications
- Tsoi, B.M., Beckhouse, A.G., Gelling, C.L., Raftery, M.J., Chiu, J., Tsoi, A.M., Lauterbach, L., Rogers, P.J., Higgins, V.J. and Dawes, I.W. (2009)
- Essential role of one-carbon metabolism and Gcn4p and Bas1p transcriptional regulators during adaptation to anaerobic growth of Saccharomyces cerevisiae
- Journal of Biological Chemistry. 284(17): 11205-11215
- TNg, C-H., Tan S-X., Perrone, G.G., Thorpe, G.W., Higgins, V.J. and Dawes, I.W. (2008)
- Adaptation to hydrogen peroxide in Saccharomyces cerevisiae: the role of NADPH generating systems and the Skn7 transcription factor.
- Free Rad. Biol. Med. 44, 1131-1145.
- Gelling, C., Dawes, I.W., Richhardt, N., Lill, R. and Mühlenhoff, U. (2008)
- Mitochondrial Iba57p is required for Fe/S cluster formation on aconitase and activation of radical SAM enzymes.
- Mol. Cell. Biol. 28, 1851-1861
- Perrone, G.G., Tan, S.X. and Dawes, I.W. (2008)
- Reactive oxygen species and yeast apoptosis.
- Biochimica Et Biophysica Acta-Molecular Cell Research. 1783: 1354-1368.
- Dilda, P.J., Perrone, G.G., Philp, A., Lock, R.B., Dawes, I.W. and Hogg, P.J. (2008)
- Insight into the selectivity of arsenic trioxide for acute promyelocytic leukemia cells by characterizing Saccharomyces cerevisiae deletion strains that are sensitive or resistant to the metalloid.
- International Journal of Biochemistry & Cell Biology. 40: 1016-1029.
- Beckhouse AG, Grant CM, Rogers PJ, Dawes IW and Higgins VJ. (2008)
- The adaptive response of anaerobically grown Saccharomyces cerevisiae to hydrogen peroxide is mediated by the Yap1 and Skn7 transcription factors.
- FEMS Yeast Research. 8: 1214-1222.
- Chiu, J., Tillett, D., Dawes, I.W. and March, P.E. (2008)
- Site-directed, Ligase-Independent Mutagenesis (SLIM) for highly efficient mutagenesis of plasmids greater than 8kb.
- Journal of Microbiological Methods. 73: 195-198.
- Fong, C.S, Temple, M.D., Alic, N., Chiu, J., Durchdewald, M., Thorpe, G., Higgins, V.J. and Dawes, I.W. (2008)
- Oxidant-induced cell-cycle delay in Saccharomyces cerevisiae: the involvement of the SWI6 transcription factor.
- FEMS Yeast Research. 8: 386-399
- Herst, P.M., Perrone, G.G., Dawes, I.W., Bircham, P.W. and Berridge, M.V. (2008)
- Plasma membrane electron transport in Saccharomyces cerevisiae depends on the presence of mitochondrial respiratory subunits.
- FEMS Yeast Research. 8: 897-905
- Ng, C.H., Tan, S.X., Perrone, G.G., Thorpe, G.W., Higgins, V.J. and Dawes, I.W. (2008)
- Adaptation to hydrogen peroxide in Saccharomyces cerevisiae: The role of NADPH-generating systems and the SKN7 transcription factor.
- Free Radical Biology and Medicine. 44: 1131-1145
- Perrone GG, Tan SX and Dawes IW. (2008)
- Reactive oxygen species and yeast apoptosis.
- Biochimica Et Biophysica Acta-Molecular Cell Research. 1783: 1354-1368.
- Tang BMP, McLean AS, Dawes IW, Huang SJ, Cowley MJ and Lin RCY (2008)
- Gene-expression profiling of Gram-positive and Gram-negative sepsis in critically ill patients.
- Critical Care Medicine. 36: 1125-1128.
- Bain M, Ahsan N, Potter J, Gaeta B, Temple M, Dawes I (2006)
- Learning causal networks from microarray data in M. Boden, T. Bailey Eds.
- Intelligent systems for bioinformatics, Australian Computer Society Inc., Sydney, Australia, pp. 3-8.
- Park, J-I., Collinson, E.J., Grant, C.M. and Dawes, I.W. (2005)
- Rom2p, the Rho1p GTP/GDP exchange factor, interacts with the Ras-cAMP pathway for stress resistance of Saccharomyces cerevisae.
- J. Biol. Chem. 280, 2529-2535.
- Dilda, P.J., Don, A.S., Tanabe, K., Higgins, V.J., Allen, J.D., Dawes, I.W. and Hogg, P.J. (2005)
- Mechanism of selectivity of an angiogenesis inhibitor from screening a genome-wide set of Saccharomyces cerevisiae deletion strains.
- J. Nat. Cancer Inst. 97, 1539-1547.
- Perrone, G.G., Tan, S.X. and Dawes, I.W. (2005)
- Reactive oxygen species and yeast apoptosis.
- Biochimica Et Biophysica Acta-Molecular Cell Research. 1783: 1354-1368.
- Gelling, C.L., Piper, M.D.W., Hong, S-P., Kornfeld, G.D. and Dawes, I.W. (2004)
- Identification of a novel one-carbon regulon in Saccharomyces cerevisiae .
- J. Biol. Chem. 279, 7072-7081.
- Thorpe, G.W., Fong, C.S., Alic, N., Higgins, V.J. and Dawes, I.W. (2004)
- Cells have distinct mechanisms to maintain protection against different reactive oxygen species: oxidative stress-response genes.
- Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. USA, 101, 6564-6569.
- Alic, N., Felder, T., Temple, M.D., Gloeckner, C., Higgins, V.J., Briza, P. and Dawes I.W. (2004)
- The transcriptional response to a lipid hydroperoxide in yeast: adaptation occurs without induction of oxidant defences.
- Free Rad. Biol. Med. 37, 23-35.