Allshire grew up in the fishing village of Howth, Co Dublin 1960–1978.[citation needed] His parents were Arthur Gordon Allshire (1925-2012) who was a Pharmacist and Freda Margaret (née Schmutz; 1933–2014).[10][11] He was awarded his Bachelor of Arts degree in Genetics by Trinity College Dublin, in 1981[citation needed] where he was motivated by the inspirational teaching of David McConnell and colleagues at the Dept of Genetics to undertake post-graduate studies.[12] He subsequently joined the
Medical Research Council (MRC) Mammalian Genome Unit at the University of Edinburgh where he obtained his PhD in 1985[2] under the guidance of Chris Bostock and Edwin Southern investigating the use of bovine papillomavirus as a chassis for mammalian artificial chromosome construction.[2]
Career and research
In 1985 Allshire joined Nicholas Hastie's research group at the MRC Human Genetics Unit, Edinburgh (formerly MRC Clinical and Population Cytogentics Unit) as a postdoctoral researcher where he discovered that mammalian telomeres are composed of simple repetitive sequences similar to those of unicellular eukaryotes[13] and that telomere length in blood cells shorten with age and are further eroded in cancerous cells.[14] This work resulted from following the fate of fission yeast (Schizosaccharomyces pombe) telomeres after introdroducing fission yeast chromosomes into mouse cell in collaboration with Peter Fantes.[15] In 1989 he took a position as an independent visiting scientist at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) for 18 months before joining the MRC Human Genetics Unit as a junior group leader. While at CSHL he decided to switch his focus to investigating chromosomal elements in the genetically tractable fission yeast.[16] At the MRC HGU, Edinburgh (1990 - 2002), and subsequently at the Wellome Trust Centre for Cell Biology, University of Edinburgh (2002–present), he discovered that genes are silenced when placed within fission yeast centromeres[17][18] and telomeres,[19] and then utilised this gene silencing to gain fundamental insights into the processes of chromosome segregation,[20][21][22] and heterochromatin[23][24][25][26] and kinetochore CENP-A chromatin[27][28][29][30][31][32] establishment[33][34] and maintenance.[35][36][37] He is particularly interested in the epigenetic mechanisms that allow the persistence of specialised chromatin domains through multiple cell divisions and meiosis.[38] He has investigated how RNA interference (RNAi) mediates heterochromatin formation[39][40][41] and shown that splicing factors contribute to heterochromatin integrity via siRNA generation and RNAi.[42][43] He has provided insight into how transcription and resulting non-coding RNA might influence the assembly of specialised CENP-A chromatin[44][45][46][47] and demonstrated that some acts of lncRNA transcription are responsive to environmental stimuli and regulate neighbouring genes by transcriptional interference.[48][49] Recently using fission yeast his team discovered an epigenetic mechanism that allows fungi to develop resistance to antifungal drugs without alterations to their DNA.[50] This finding is important for understanding how pathogenic fungi become resistant to the limited number of available antifungal agents in both clinical and agricultural arenas.
^ abAnon (2011). "Professor Robin Allshire FRS". royalsociety.org. One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from the royalsociety.org website where:
^Allshire, Robin C; Gosden, John R; Cross, Sally H; Cranston, Gwen; Rout, Derek; Sugawara, Neal; Szostak, Jack W; Fantes, Peter A; Hastie, Nicholas D (1988). "Telomeric repeat from T. Thermophila cross hybridizes with human telomeres". Nature. 332 (6165): 656–9. Bibcode:1988Natur.332..656A. doi:10.1038/332656a0. PMID2833706. S2CID4352376.
^Hastie, Nicholas D; Dempster, Maureen; Dunlop, Malcolm G; Thompson, Alastair M; Green, Daryll K; Allshire, Robin C (1990). "Telomere reduction in human colorectal carcinoma and with ageing". Nature. 346 (6287): 866–8. Bibcode:1990Natur.346..866H. doi:10.1038/346866a0. PMID2392154. S2CID4258451.
^Allshire, R. C; Cranston, G; Gosden, J. R; Maule, J. C; Hastie, N. D; Fantes, P. A (1987). "A fission yeast chromosome can replicate autonomously in mouse cells". Cell. 50 (3): 391–403. doi:10.1016/0092-8674(87)90493-4. PMID3475186. S2CID2193386.
^Pidoux, A. L; Uzawa, S; Perry, P. E; Cande, W. Z; Allshire, R. C (2000). "Live analysis of lagging chromosomes during anaphase and their effect on spindle elongation rate in fission yeast". Journal of Cell Science. 113 Pt 23 (23): 4177–91. doi:10.1242/jcs.113.23.4177. PMID11069763.
^Bannister, Andrew J; Zegerman, Philip; Partridge, Janet F; Miska, Eric A; Thomas, Jean O; Allshire, Robin C; Kouzarides, Tony (2001). "Selective recognition of methylated lysine 9 on histone H3 by the HP1 chromo domain". Nature. 410 (6824): 120–4. Bibcode:2001Natur.410..120B. doi:10.1038/35065138. PMID11242054. S2CID4334447.
