Sohaila Rastan

Last updated
Sohaila Rastan
Known forCharacterisation of the mouse Xist gene
Scientific career
Fields Genetics
InstitutionsMRC Radiobiology Unit
MRC Clinical Research Centre
SmithKline Beecham
Wellcome Trust
Royal National Institute for Deaf People
Academic advisors Richard Gardner (embryologist)
Mary F. Lyon

Sohaila Rastan is a British geneticist and former Director of Science Funding at the Wellcome Trust. [1]

Contents

Education

Rastan studied Zoology at the University of Oxford, where she was an undergraduate student at Somerville College. [2] She then stayed in Oxford to do a PhD under the supervision of Richard Gardner and Mary Lyon at the MRC Radiobiology Unit in Harwell, developing a model of X chromosome inactivation based on counting X chromosome inactivation centres. [2] [3] [4]

Research and career

Rastan did postdoctoral research at the MRC Clinical Research Centre in Harrow, where she subsequently became head of the Division of Comparative Medicine and her team, including Neil Brockdorff, mapped, cloned, and characterised the mouse Xist gene, proving functionally that it is the X inactivation centre. [2] [3] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] Her team demonstrated that the Xist gene has no open reading frame, with its product consisting of mRNA transcripts. [3] [10]

After a period with the Benedictine order, Rastan spent four years at SmithKline Beecham, initially as director of Comparative Genetics and subsequently as group director of Biotechnology and Genetics. [1] [2] [11] [12] After leading a start-up biotechnology company, Ceros Ltd, she has served as Director of Science Funding at Wellcome and as Executive Director of Biomedical Research at the Royal National Institute for Deaf People/Action on Hearing Loss. [12] [13]

Rastan was elected a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2001 and was a Suffrage Science Awardee in 2011. [3] [14]

References

  1. 1 2 Curtis, Polly (2003-10-15). "Geneticist becomes funding director at Wellcome Trust". The Guardian. ISSN   0261-3077 . Retrieved 2025-04-25.
  2. 1 2 3 4 Peters, Jo; Rastan, Sohaila (2022-07-27). "Bruce Macintosh Cattanach. 5 November 1932—8 April 2020". Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society. 73: 85–106. doi: 10.1098/rsbm.2022.0013 .
  3. 1 2 3 4 "Dr. Sohaila Rastan". acmedsci.ac.uk. Retrieved 2025-04-25.
  4. ↑ Rastan, S.; Robertson, E. J. (December 1985). "X-chromosome deletions in embryo-derived (EK) cell lines associated with lack of X-chromosome inactivation". Journal of Embryology and Experimental Morphology. 90: 379–388. ISSN   0022-0752. PMID   3834036.
  5. ↑ Rodriguez, Yolanda Moyano; Borensztein, Maud (2023-11-23). "X-chromosome inactivation: a historic topic that's still hot". Development. 150 (22): dev202072. doi:10.1242/dev.202072. ISSN   0950-1991. PMID   37997921.
  6. ↑ "Brockdorff Lab - Neil Brockdorff". sites.google.com. Retrieved 2025-04-25.
  7. ↑ "Professor Neil Brockdorff". acmedsci.ac.uk. Retrieved 2025-04-25.
  8. ↑ Penny, Graeme D.; Kay, Graham F.; Sheardown, Steven A.; Rastan, Sohaila; Brockdorff, Neil (January 1996). "Requirement for Xist in X chromosome inactivation" . Nature. 379 (6561): 131–137. Bibcode:1996Natur.379..131P. doi:10.1038/379131a0. ISSN   1476-4687. PMID   8538762.
  9. ↑ Rastan, Sohaila (1994-04-01). "X chromosome inactivation and the Xist gene" . Current Opinion in Genetics & Development. 4 (2): 292–297. doi:10.1016/S0959-437X(05)80056-5. ISSN   0959-437X. PMID   8032207.
  10. ↑ Brockdorff, Neil; Ashworth, Alan; Kay, Graham F.; McCabe, Veronica M.; Norris, Dominic P.; Cooper, Penny J.; Swift, Sally; Rastan, Sohaila (1992-10-30). "The product of the mouse Xist gene is a 15 kb inactive X-specific transcript containing no conserved ORF and located in the nucleus" . Cell. 71 (3): 515–526. doi:10.1016/0092-8674(92)90519-I. ISSN   0092-8674. PMID   1423610.
  11. ↑ "Scientific spirit lived in monastic, scholastic and business lives". Times Higher Education (THE). 2006-09-15. Retrieved 2025-04-25.
  12. 1 2 Ash, by Robin (2003-11-20). "Scientist finds a winning formula". www.thetimes.com. Retrieved 2025-04-25.
  13. ↑ "Breakthrough towards drug for hearing loss - Drug Discovery Today". www.drugdiscoverytoday.com. Retrieved 2025-04-25.
  14. ↑ Science, Suffrage (2011-02-18). "Life Sciences 2011: Launch". suffragescience. Retrieved 2025-04-25.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.