Biological Sciences

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Fiona graduated in 1991 with a Bsc (Hons) in Molecular Biology from Portsmouth Polytechnic. She stayed in Portsmouth for her postgraduate studentship studies, working in the lab of Dr Sarah Newbury. The PhD was awarded in 1995 for her work entitled "Factors affecting the control of maternal messenger RNA stability in early Drosophila development".

In November 1995 Fiona began her first post-doctoral position in the lab of Professor Colyn Crane-Robinson using ChIP (chromatin immuno-precipitation) assays to map the genomic locations of modified histones at housekeeping and tissue specific genes. The work continued to map the modified histones across two chicken gene loci (beta-globin and lysozyme) in different developmental stages of the erythroid and myeloid cell lineages.

In 2004 Fiona took up a position as a senior lecturer in the school of Biological Sciences.

Research Interests

Fiona's main research interest is the role of linker histones in gene regulation. Essentially this project is concerned with the development of antibodies to establish the location of linker histone variants at well-characterised gene loci. The lab has successfully raised specific antibodies to each of the 6 chicken H1 variants (H1.01, H1.02, H1.03, H1.10, H1.11L and H1.11R), these will be used in xChIP assays and their distribution mapped by quantitative real time PCR at different developmental stages across the chicken beta-globin and lysozyme loci.

Recent Publications

More recent publications

Publications Before 2008

Myers FA, Lefevre P, Mantouvalou E, Bruce K, Lacroix C, Bonifer C, Thorne AW, Crane-Robinson C. (2006). Developmental activation of the lysozyme gene in chicken macrophage cells is linked to core histone acetylation at its enhancer elements. Nucleic Acids Res. 34, 4025-35.

Bruce K, Myers FA, Mantouvalou E, Lefevre P, Greaves I, Bonifer C, Tremethick DJ, Thorne AW, Crane-Robinson C. (2005) The replacement histone H2A.Z in a hyperacetylated form is a feature of active genes in the chicken. Nucleic Acids Res. 33, 5633-9.

Sapojnikova N, Maman J, Myers FA, Thorne AW, Vorobyev VI, Crane-Robinson C. (2005) Biochemical observation of the rapid mobility of nuclear HMGB1. Biochim Biophys Acta. 1729, 57-63.

Bannister AJ, Schneider R, Myers FA, Thorne AW, Crane-Robinson C, Kouzarides T. (2005) Spatial distribution of di- and tri-methyl lysine 36 of histone H3 at active genes. J Biol Chem. 280, 17732-6.

Thorne AW, Myers FA, Hebbes TR. (2004) Native chromatin immunoprecipitation. Methods Mol Biol. 287, 21-44.

Boukaba A, Georgieva EI, Myers FA, Thorne AW, Lopez-Rodas G, Crane-Robinson C, Franco L. (2004) A short-range gradient of histone H3 acetylation and Tup1p redistribution at the promoter of the Saccharomyces cerevisiae SUC2 gene. J Biol Chem. 279, 7678-84

Schneider R, Bannister AJ, Myers FA, Thorne AW, Crane-Robinson C, Kouzarides T. (2004) Histone H3 lysine 4 methylation patterns in higher eukaryotic genes. Nat Cell Biol. 6, 73-7.

Myers FA, Chong W, Evans DR, Thorne AW, Crane-Robinson C. (2003) Acetylation of histone H2B mirrors that of H4 and H3 at the chicken beta-globin locus but not at housekeeping genes. J Biol Chem. 278, 36315-22.

Lutz M, Burke LJ, LeFevre P, Myers FA, Thorne AW, Crane-Robinson C, Bonifer C, Filippova GN, Lobanenkov V, Renkawitz R. (2003) Thyroid hormone-regulated enhancer blocking: cooperation of CTCF and thyroid hormone receptor. EMBO J. 22, 1579-87.

Brickwood SJ, Myers FA, Chandler SP. (2002) Methods for the analysis of protein-chromatin interactions. Mol Biotechnol. 20, 1-15.

Myers FA, Evans DR, Clayton AL, Thorne AW, Crane-Robinson C. (2001)  Targeted and extended acetylation of histones H4 and H3 at active and inactive genes in chicken embryo erythrocytes. J Biol Chem. 276, 20197-205

Crane-Robinson C, Myers FA, Hebbes TR, Clayton AL, Thorne AW. (1999) Chromatin immunoprecipitation assays in acetylation mapping of higher eukaryotes. Methods Enzymol. 304, 533-47.

Myers FA, Francis-Lang H, Newbury SF. (1995) Degradation of maternal string mRNA is controlled by proteins encoded on maternally contributed transcripts. Mech Dev. 51, 217-26.

Funding Sources

IBBS funded PhD studentship

Teaching Interests

• Maths
• Immunology
• Applied Forensic Biology