Marilyn Renfree

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Marilyn Renfree

AO FAA FRS
Born (1947-04-19) 19 April 1947 (age 76)
Brisbane, Queensland, Australia
NationalityAustralian
Alma mater Australian National University
Known forResearch on marsupial foetal development
Scientific career
FieldsZoology
Institutions University of Melbourne
Thesis Embryo-maternal relationships in the tammar wallaby, macropus eugenii (1972)

Marilyn Bernice Renfree AO FAA FRS (born 19 April 1947) is an Australian zoologist. She completed her PhD at the Australian National University, was a post-doctoral fellow in Tennessee and then Edinburgh before returning to Australia. Since 1991, Renfree has been Professor of Zoology at the University of Melbourne. [1] Her main research interest focuses on reproductive and developmental biology of marsupials.

Contents

Early life

Marilyn Renfree was born in Brisbane, Queensland but moved to Canberra where her father was appointed Commonwealth Crown Solicitor. Renfree went to Canberra Girls' Grammar School where she studied French, German, English, geography, maths and biology. [2]

Renfree then studied biology at the Australian National University. The subjects she loved the most were biochemistry and reproduction and development. She chose to do her Honours degree to be involved in both biochemistry and fieldwork which, in those days, was seen as unusual. Renfree's Honours degree was about studying the composition of foetal fluids of the tammar wallaby. To do so, she had to invent a new way to catch female tammars on Kangaroo Island, to get enough individuals to work on. [2]

Research career

She started her PhD project by studying all aspects of maternal-foetal interactions in marsupials. As part as her research, she showed that it was possible to reactivate embryos that were in embryonic diapause (a state of suspended animation) and carry them to full term by giving progesterone injections. She also showed that marsupials have a functional placenta which produces hormones. Moreover, Renfree showed that, like in any mammal, marsupial placenta regulates precisely what goes from mother to foetus. Renfree also proved that, during pregnancy, the two uteri of kangaroos and wallabies behave differently, the gravid one becoming larger than the non-pregnant one due to the presence or absence of the embryo. This was Renfree's first paper and it was published in Nature . [3] [4]

In March 1972, Renfree finished her PhD, worked for six months in Zoology at ANU and then moved to the University of Tennessee to work with Joe Daniel. The project was funded by NIH to study uterine proteins and the influence of melatonin on uterine secretions. [5] While working there, Renfree also started a project on the endocrinology of opossums. To get possums for this work, she advertised in the local newspaper and soon became known as the "possum lady from Australia". [2]

Renfree then moved to the University of Edinburgh, to learn about genetics in Anne McLaren's lab. She worked on foetal fluids in mice, repeating what she had previously done in with tammar wallabies.

Renfree moved back to Australia to take up a lecturer position in vertebrate biology at Murdoch University, Perth, WA in 1973. Renfree established a colony of tammars at Murdoch University and also started working on agile wallabies, studying them to understand how lactation is controlled in marsupials. She also started working on honey possums, in collaboration with Ron Wooller.

In January 1982, Renfree married Roger Short and they both moved to Monash University, Melbourne, Victoria where she started her third tammar colony. She received a National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) fellowship and was a Principal Research Fellow for ten years at Monash, working full-time on research.

Her two daughters, Tamsin and Kirsten were born in 1983 and 1986. In collaboration with her husband, Renfree studied the contraceptive effects of breastfeeding, showing that breastfeeding on demand had a very effective contraceptive effect. Renfree, in collaboration with David Parer and Liz Parer-Cook, participated in The Nature of Australia, a series by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation celebrating Australia's bicentenary in 1988. Methods used to film tammars were then used to study the birth process in marsupials. Renfree showed that, as for other mammals, prostaglandin is involved in birth and that, as well as for other mammals, the marsupial baby is capable of modifying maternal physiology at birth. [2]

In 1991, Renfree was appointed Chair of Zoology and Head of Department at Melbourne University, a position she held until 2003. She became a Laureate Professor of the University in 2002, and in 2003 was awarded a Federation Fellowship. In 2011, Renfree was one of the lead researchers on the first kangaroo genome sequencing project [6] Renfree currently serves on the Prime Minister's Science Prizes Committee for Australia.

Awards

Renfree was awarded the Gottschalk Medal in 1980, the Mueller Medal in 1997. She was elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science in 1997. She was awarded the Gold Conservation Medal of the Zoological Society of San Diego for 2000, the Commonwealth of Australia's Centenary Medal in 2003, and was made an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) in 2013 "for distinguished service to biology, particularly through leadership in the research into marsupial reproduction, and to the scientific community". [7] In March 2019 Renfree was awarded the Carl G. Hartmann Award by the Society for the Study of Reproduction [8] and in 2020 the Macfarlane Burnet Medal and Lecture by the Australian Academy of Science. [9] She was made a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2021. [10]

Mentors

Renfree has had several mentors during her study years and career. Mrs Nicholson, who was also fondly called Mrs Nick by her students, was Renfree's biology teacher in fourth and fifth grade. Mrs Nicholson was a very important link to science for Renfree, being one of very few Australian female Doctors in Science at that time.[ citation needed ]

Another link to science was Renfree's sister, Bev, who was Frank Fenner's technician. Bev also worked at the John Curtin School of Medical Research when Renfree worked there for a short time between school and university.

Prof. Amoroso [11] was very supportive of Renfree's work during her PhD and after. Renfree co-authored a paper "Hormones and the evolution of viviparity" with Amoroso in 1979.

Woman in science

Renfree's father didn't expect her or her sister to go to university; he was expecting their brother to go. When Renfree told her father that she wanted to start studying at university, he told her that she had one year to prove what she could do. At the end of her first year, Renfree got a scholarship and supported herself through the rest of her studies. Her father was very pleased and got both very enthusiastic and supportive. While Renfree was doing her PhD, she never told any boy she would meet at a party that she was actually doing a PhD. Saying that she worked in the Zoology Department was simpler. Renfree believes Murdoch University was the first place she met discrimination as a woman in science, being "the wrong sex, the wrong age". [2]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kangaroo</span> Marsupial of the family Macropodidae indigenous to Australia

Kangaroos are four marsupials from the family Macropodidae. In common use the term is used to describe the largest species from this family, the red kangaroo, as well as the antilopine kangaroo, eastern grey kangaroo, and western grey kangaroo. Kangaroos are indigenous to Australia and New Guinea. The Australian government estimates that 42.8 million kangaroos lived within the commercial harvest areas of Australia in 2019, down from 53.2 million in 2013.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Marsupial</span> Infraclass of mammals in the clade Metatheria

Marsupials are any members of the mammalian infraclass Marsupialia. All extant marsupials are endemic to Australasia, Wallacea and the Americas. A distinctive characteristic common to most of these species is that the young are carried in a pouch. Living marsupials include opossums, Tasmanian devils, kangaroos, koalas, wombats, wallabies, and bandicoots among others, while many extinct species, such as the thylacine, are also known.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wallaby</span> Common name of small- or mid-sized macropods found in Australia and New Guinea

A wallaby is a small or middle-sized macropod native to Australia and New Guinea, with introduced populations in New Zealand, Hawaii, the United Kingdom and other countries. They belong to the same taxonomic family as kangaroos and sometimes the same genus, but kangaroos are specifically categorised into the four largest species of the family. The term "wallaby" is an informal designation generally used for any macropod that is smaller than a kangaroo or a wallaroo that has not been designated otherwise.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Honey possum</span> Species of marsupial

The honey possum or noolbenger, is a tiny species of marsupial that feeds on the nectar and pollen of a diverse range of flowering plants. Found only in southwest Australia, it is an important pollinator for such plants as Banksia attenuata, Banksia coccinea and Adenanthos cuneatus.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Macropodidae</span> Family of marsupial mammals

Macropodidae is a family of marsupials that includes kangaroos, wallabies, tree-kangaroos, wallaroos, pademelons, quokkas, and several other groups. These genera are allied to the suborder Macropodiformes, containing other macropods, and are native to the Australian continent, New Guinea and nearby islands.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Parma wallaby</span> Species of marsupial

The parma wallaby is a small, hopping, kangaroo-like mammal native to forests of southeastern Australia. About the size of a stout cat, it lives in dense shrub and is only active at night to feed on grasses and small plants. It is the smallest of the wallabies and carries its young in a pouch like other marsupials. Shy and elusive, it was believed extinct until rediscovery in the 1960s. It is threatened by habitat loss and is easily killed by non-native foxes.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tammar wallaby</span> A small macropod native to South and Western Australia

The tammar wallaby, also known as the dama wallaby or darma wallaby, is a small macropod native to South and Western Australia. Though its geographical range has been severely reduced since European colonisation, the tammar wallaby remains common within its reduced range and is listed as "Least Concern" by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). It has been introduced to New Zealand and reintroduced to some areas of Australia where it had been previously extirpated. Skull variations differentiate between tammar wallabies from Western Australia, Kangaroo Island, and mainland South Australia, making them distinct population groups.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Australidelphia</span> Superorder of marsupials

Australidelphia is the superorder that contains roughly three-quarters of all marsupials, including all those native to Australasia and a single species — the monito del monte — from South America. All other American marsupials are members of the Ameridelphia. Analysis of retrotransposon insertion sites in the nuclear DNA of a variety of marsupials has shown that the South American monito del monte's lineage is the most basal of the superorder.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pouch (marsupial)</span> Anatomical structure of marsupials

The pouch is a distinguishing feature of female marsupials, monotremes and possibly most extinct non-placental mammals including eutherians like Zalambdalestes ; the name marsupial is derived from the Latin marsupium, meaning "pouch". This is due to the occurrence of epipubic bones, a pair of bones projecting forward from the pelvis. Marsupials give birth to a live but relatively undeveloped fetus called a joey. When the joey is born it crawls from inside the mother to the pouch. The pouch is a fold of skin with a single opening that covers the teats. Inside the pouch, the blind offspring attaches itself to one of the mother’s teats and remains attached for as long as it takes to grow and develop to a juvenile stage.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mammalian reproduction</span> Most mammals are viviparous, giving birth to live young

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Jennifer Ann Marshall Graves is an Australian geneticist. She is Distinguished Professor within the La Trobe Institute for Molecular Science, La Trobe University, Australia and Professor Emeritus of the Australian National University.

Rebecca Spindler is the head of science and conservation at non-profit conservation organisation Bush Heritage Australia. She previously was the manager of research and conservation at Taronga Conservation Society Australia, in the New South Wales Office of Environment and Heritage (OEH).

Janine Deakin is a professor at the University of Canberra and Executive Dean of the Faculty of Science and Technology. She is a geneticist with expertise in the areas of comparative genomics, epigenetics, genetic immunology and genome structure and regulation. A majority of her work has focused on the Australian marsupials and monotremes where her cytogenetic and molecular research on marsupial chromosomes and development of strategies to map genomes has provided important insight into the evolution of mammalian genomes.

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Patricia Woolley is Australian zoologist recognised for her work with marsupials, specifically the dasyurid family. Pseudantechinus woolleyae is named for her.

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Thomas B. Hildebrandt is a German veterinarian researcher dedicated to species conservation. He heads the Department of Reproduction Management at the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research (IZW) in Berlin and holds a full professorship for Wildlife Reproduction Medicine at the veterinary faculty of the Freie Universität Berlin.

References

  1. ↑ "Professor Marilyn Renfree". Faculty of Science. Science.unimelb.edu.au. Archived from the original on 14 August 2014. Retrieved 15 August 2014.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 "Professor Marilyn Renfree". Australian Academy of Science. 7 April 2009. Archived from the original on 14 August 2014. Retrieved 15 August 2014.
  3. ↑ Marilyn B. Renfree (22 December 1972). "Influence of the Embryo on the Marsupial Uterus". Nature. Nature.com. 240 (5382): 475–477. Bibcode:1972Natur.240..475R. doi:10.1038/240475a0. PMID   4565944. S2CID   4170464 . Retrieved 15 August 2014.
  4. ↑ "Searching".
  5. ↑ "Renfree, Marilyn Bernice". Biographical entry - Encyclopedia of Australian Science. eoas.info. Retrieved 15 August 2014.
  6. ↑ "First kangaroo genome sequence reveals possible gene responsible for characteristic hop". ScienceDaily. Retrieved 15 August 2014.
  7. ↑ "Expert Women in Life Sciences". WiLS Database. Wils-database.embo.org. 21 March 2014. Retrieved 15 August 2014.
  8. ↑ Badge, Emily (21 March 2019). "Marilyn Renfree awarded the Society for the Study of Reproduction's Carl G. Hartmann Award". School of BioSciences. Retrieved 21 March 2019.
  9. ↑ "Macfarlane Burnet Medal and Lecture - Award background and eligibility". Australian Academy of Science. Retrieved 2 May 2020.
  10. ↑ "Royal Society elects outstanding new Fellows and Foreign Members". The Royal Society. 6 May 2021. Retrieved 6 May 2021.
  11. ↑ "Caribbean Icons in STI". Niherst. Archived from the original on 14 August 2014. Retrieved 15 August 2014.
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