Associate Professor Andrew Collins
- Position: Associate Professor
- Room: 353, Biological Sciences
- Phone: (+61 2) 9385 3441
- Fax: (+61 2) 9385 1483
- email: a.collins@unsw.edu.au
Deputy Head of School
Professional Experience
- 1981-1984 Assistant to the Director, Papua New Guinea Institute of Medical Research, Goroka, Papua New Guinea
- 1985-1986 Research Assistant, WHO Collaborating Centre for the Epidemiology of Diabetes Mellitus, Southern Memorial Hospital, Melbourne
- 1990 Research Scientist, Division of Pathology, Royal Children's Hospital, Melbourne
- 1991-2002 Lecturer, Senior Lecturer, UNSW
Research Contribution
Early career contributions to research were in the fields of epidemiology, then regulation of the antibody-mediated immune response and mast cell function. More recently, my work has continued its focus on allergic disease, but has involved a major use of bioinformatic studies.
We developed new strategies for the accurate identification of the genetic elements that together make up immunoglobulin genes. This strategy allowed us to develop large databases of partitioned sequences, from which we could quantify the contributions that different processes make to the generation of diversity. In turn, this led to the development of a hidden Markov Model-based approach to the partitioning of immunoglobulin genes. Our alignment utility has been objectively demonstrated to be the most accurate tool available.
Using our alignment utility, we have compiled very large databases of partitioned heavy and light chain genes, allowing us to evaluate both the completeness and the accuracy of the reported gene repertoires. We have been able to identify over 100 reported immunoglobulin genes that have been reported in error, and which should be removed from the germline sequence databases. We have also identified 15 putative unreported polymorphisms, using this bioinformatic analysis, and have gone on to confirm the existence of 5 of these putative polymorphisms by genome screening.
A focus of our work for the last five years has been the development of new approaches to the inference of antigen selection. We published an improved approach three years ago, but have recently developed an entirely new kind of analysis that we believe will have a major impact on the field.
Honours & Awards
- Vice-Chancellor's Award for Teaching Excellence 1999
- UNSW Nominee, Australian University Teaching Award 1999
- Grant Reviewer (NHMRC, ARC, NZ Health Reseach Council)
- Reviewer for journals including: Journal of Immunology, Immunology, Int. Archives of Allergy & Immunology, BMC Immunology, BMC Bioinformatics etc
Active Research Projects
- A Bioinformatic Study of Immunoglobulin Lambda Genes
- Investigation of Allele-specific Regulation of Recombination During Immunoglobulin VDJ Gene Rearrangement
- Investigation of the Relationship Between IgG4 and IgE Antibodies in Allergic Disease
Publications
- Wang, Y., Jackson, K. J.L., Sewell, W.A., and Collins, A.M. (2008)
- Many human immunoglobulin heavy-chain IGHV gene polymorphisms have been reported in error.
- Immunology and Cell Biology 86: 111-115
- Collins, A.M., Wang, Y., Singh, V., Yu, P., Jackson, K.J. and Sewell, W.A. (2008)
- The reported germline repertoire of human immunoglobulin kappa chain genes is relatively complete and accurate.
- Immunogenetics. 60: 669-676.
- Gaëta, B., Malming, H. R., Jackson, K.J. L., Bain, M.E., Wilson, P., and Collins, A. M. (2007)
- iHMMune-align: Hidden Markov model-based alignment and identification of germline segments in immunoglobulin gene sequences.
- Bioinformatics 23: 1580-1587
- Jackson, K.J., Gaeta, B., and Collins, A.M. (2007)
- Identifying highly mutated IGHD genes in the junctions of rearranged human immunoglobulin heavy chain genes
- Journal of Immunological Methods 324: 26-37
- Lee, C. E.H., Jackson, K.J. L., Sewell, W.A., and Collins, A.M. (2007)
- Use of IGHJ and IGHD gene mutations in analysis of immunoglobulin sequences for the prognosis of chronic lymphocytic leukemia
- Leukemia Research 31: 1247-1252
- Lee CEH, Gaeta B, Malming HR, Bain ME, Sewell WA and Collins A.M. (2006)
- Reconsidering the immunoglobulin heavy chain locus. 1. An evaluation of the expressed human IGHD repertoire
- Immunogenetics 57: 917-25.
- Dahlke I., Nott D.J., Ruhno J., Sewell W.A. and Collins A.M. (2006)
- Antigen selection in the IgE response of allergic and non-allergic individuals.
- J Allergy Clin Immunol. 117: 1477-83
- Jackson N.E., Wang H.W., Tedla N., McNeil H.P., Geczy C.L., Collins A.M., et al. (2005)
- IL-15 induces mast cell migration via a pertussis toxin-sensitive receptor
- Eur. J. Immunol.; 35:2376-85
- Collins, A.M., M. Ikutani, D. Puiu, G.A. Buck, A. Nadkarni, and B. Gaeta (2004)
- Partitioning of rearranged immunoglobulin genes by mutation analysis demonstrates D-D fusion and V gene replacement in the expressed human repertoire.
- J Immunol. 172:340
- Jackson K.J., Gaeta B., Sewell W., Collins A.M. (2004)
- Exonuclease activity and P nucleotide addition in the generation of the expressed immunoglobulin repertoire.
- BMC Immunology 5:19
- Collins, A.M., Sewell, W.A. and Edwards, M.R. (2003)
- Immunoglobulin gene rearrangement, repertoire diversity and the allergic response
- Pharmacol. Ther. 100:157
- Collins, A., Ikutani, M., Puiu, D., Buck, G., Nadkarni, A., & Gaeta, B. (2003)
- Partitioning of rearranged Ig genes by mutation analysis demonstrates D-D fusion and V gene replacement in the expressed human repertoire
- J. Immunol , 172:340-348