Joan K Heath

Summary

Associate Professor Joan Heath received her undergraduate and PhD degrees in Cambridge, England, where she studied the role of osteoblast-osteoclast interactions and matrix metalloproteinase activity in the breakdown of bone. After post-doctoral positions in bone biology and osteoporosis research at the Merck Sharp and Dohme Research Laboratories in Philadelphia, USA and St. Vincent’s Institute for Medical Research in Melbourne, Australia, Joan joined the Melbourne-Parkville Branch of the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research and switched her focus to colon cancer, becoming joint-head of the Colon Molecular and Cell Biology laboratory in 1998. Shortly after this time she adopted the zebrafish as a vertebrate model in which to discover genes with functions in intestinal development that may also be critical for the development and progression of colon cancer. In October 2012 she moved her laboratory to the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research in Melbourne, where she is a member of the Development and Cancer Division.

Developmental Biology

Work details

Associate Professor & Laboratory Head

The Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research

October 2012

Development and Cancer

Joan Heath is a laboratory head in the Development and Cancer Division of the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research in Melbourne, Australia. Prior to this she was co-head of the Colon Molecular and Cell Biology Laboratory at the Melbourne-Parkville Branch of the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research (1998-2012). For the last 15 years she has embraced the zebrafish as a vertebrate model in which to discover genes with functions in intestinal development that may also be critical for the development of colon cancer. Her laboratory’s positional cloning of the underlying genes in several zebrafish intestinal mutants has drawn attention to a group of “information-processing” genes (transcription factors, rRNA processing genes, mRNA splicing genes, nuclear pore components) that are essential for the growth and proliferation of intestinal epithelial cells. The overarching aim of her laboratory is to determine whether these genes contribute to tumorigenesis. To do this, her team uses zebrafish cancer models, loss-of-function mouse models and analysis of human cancer transcriptomes.

Websites

PeerJ Contributions

Edited 5

Academic Editor on

June 26, 2018

Association of Crohn’s disease-related chromosome 1q32 with ankylosing spondylitis is independent of bowel symptoms and faecal calprotectin

Rebecca L. Roberts, Mary C. Wallace, Andrew A. Harrison, Douglas White, Nicola Dalbeth, Lisa K. Stamp, Daniel Ching, John Highton, Tony R. Merriman, Philip C. Robinson, Matthew A. Brown, Simon M. Stebbings

https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.5088 PubMed 29967744

November 29, 2017

Transcriptomic profiling of mTOR and ryanodine receptor signaling molecules in developing zebrafish in the absence and presence of PCB 95

Daniel F. Frank, Galen W. Miller, Richard E. Connon, Juergen Geist, Pamela J. Lein

https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.4106 PubMed 29201571

February 21, 2017

Bax-inhibitor-1 knockdown phenotypes are suppressed by Buffy and exacerbate degeneration in a Drosophila model of Parkinson disease

P. Githure M’Angale, Brian E. Staveley

https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.2974 PubMed 28243526

August 9, 2016

Temporal dynamics of the developing lung transcriptome in three common inbred strains of laboratory mice reveals multiple stages of postnatal alveolar development

Kyle J. Beauchemin, Julie M. Wells, Alvin T. Kho, Vivek M. Philip, Daniela Kamir, Isaac S. Kohane, Joel H. Graber, Carol J. Bult

https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.2318 PubMed 27602285

March 31, 2016

Investigation of the effects of estrogen on skeletal gene expression during zebrafish larval head development

Ehsan Pashay Ahi, Benjamin S. Walker, Christopher S. Lassiter, Zophonías O. Jónsson

https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.1878 PubMed 27069811