Miriam Moffatt

Last updated
Miriam Moffatt
FRSB MAE
Born
Miriam Fleur Moffatt
Alma mater University of Reading (BSc)
University of Oxford (DPhil)
Scientific career
Institutions University of Oxford
Imperial College London
Thesis Genetic studies of atopy  (1993)
Doctoral advisor William Cookson
Julian Hopkin [1]
Website profiles.imperial.ac.uk/m.moffatt OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg

Miriam Fleur Moffatt FRSB MAE is a British physician who is a professor of respiratory genetics at Imperial College London. [2] [3] [4] She serves as the deputy director of the National Centre for Mesothelioma Research where her research investigates the genetics of asthma, thoraic cancers and atopic dermatitis. [5] [6] [7] [8]

Contents

Early life and education

Moffatt studied microbiology at the University of Reading. [9] She moved to the University of Oxford, where she worked on the genetics of asthma, and was awarded a PhD in 1993 for genetic analysis of atopy. [1]

Research and career

After her PhD, she was awarded a Junior Research Fellowship at Green Templeton College, Oxford.[ when? ] Moffatt started her academic career on the faculty at the University of Oxford. She was made a research lecturer, and eventually a Reader in Genetics. At Oxford, she led the first microsatellite screen for asthma associated traits. [9] She moved to Imperial College London in 2005, where she joined the National Heart and Lung Institute.[ citation needed ] She was named a Personal Chair in Respiratory Genetics in 2008. Her research looks to understand why certain people are predisposed to asthma and atopic dermatitis. She develops candidate gene approaches to genome-wide association studies (GWAS).[ citation needed ]

A Moffatt GWAS of childhood asthma identified Ormdl sphingolipid biosynthesis regulator 3, an asthma predisposition locus on chromosome 17q12. This locus has the strongest genetic association with childhood asthma, and makes children susceptible to asthma exacerbations.[ citation needed ] She conducted a 26,000 person GWAS in seventeen countries, which showed that variants at the ORMDL3/GSDMB locus were associated with childhood-onset disease. [10]

Moffatt looks to design diagnostic tools that use DNA sequencing to understand lung bacteria, then identify antibiotics that target specific bacteria (so-called narrow-spectrum antibiotics). [11]


Selected publications

Her publications [3] [2] [4] include:

Awards and honours

Moffatt was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Biology (FRSB) and the Member of the Academia Europaea (MAE) in 2020. [9]

References

  1. 1 2 Moffatt, Miriam Fleur (1993). Genetic studies of atopy. ox.ac.uk (DPhil thesis). University of Oxford. OCLC   863517147.
  2. 1 2 Miriam Moffatt publications from Europe PubMed Central OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg
  3. 1 2 Miriam Moffatt publications indexed by Google Scholar OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg
  4. 1 2 Miriam Moffatt publications indexed by the Scopus bibliographic database. (subscription required)
  5. 1 2 Adam E Locke; Bratati Kahali; Sonja I Berndt; et al. (12 February 2015). "Genetic studies of body mass index yield new insights for obesity biology". Nature . 518 (7538): 197–206. doi:10.1038/NATURE14177. ISSN   1476-4687. PMC   4382211 . PMID   25673413. Wikidata   Q22305005.
  6. 1 2 Speliotes EK; Willer CJ; Berndt SI; et al. (November 2010). "Association analyses of 249,796 individuals reveal 18 new loci associated with body mass index". Nature Genetics . 42 (11): 937–48. doi:10.1038/NG.686. ISSN   1061-4036. PMC   3014648 . PMID   20935630. Wikidata   Q29547208.
  7. 1 2 Susannah J Salter; Michael J Cox; Elena M Turek; et al. (2014). "Reagent and laboratory contamination can critically impact sequence-based microbiome analyses". BMC Biology . 12 (1): 87. doi: 10.1186/S12915-014-0087-Z . ISSN   1741-7007. PMC   4228153 . PMID   25387460. Wikidata   Q21146690.
  8. ↑ Miriam Moffatt on LinkedIn OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg
  9. 1 2 3 "Academy of Europe: CV". ae-info.org. Academia Europaea . Retrieved 2025-03-07.
  10. ↑ Moffatt, Miriam F.; Gut, Ivo G.; Demenais, Florence; Strachan, David P.; Bouzigon, Emmanuelle; Heath, Simon; von Mutius, Erika; Farrall, Martin; Lathrop, Mark; Cookson, William O.C.M. (2010-09-23). "A Large-Scale, Consortium-Based Genomewide Association Study of Asthma". New England Journal of Medicine. 363 (13): 1211–1221. doi:10.1056/NEJMoa0906312. ISSN   0028-4793. PMC   4260321 . PMID   20860503.
  11. ↑ Myers, Maxine (2017-08-10). "How the microbiome could tackle antibiotic resistant infections in the lungs". Imperial News. Imperial College London. Retrieved 2025-03-07.
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