Early in her career Dr. Lin discovered a glucocorticoid receptor variant that confers increased risk of obesity and coronary artery disease in a unique Anglo-Celtic Australian population, and published various studies on genetic variants in essential hypertension, type 2 diabetes and coronary artery diseases. She also developed the first quantitative RT-PCR method in real-time to test for TNF receptor 1 and 2 in rat models of hypertension, while qRT-PCR was at its infant stage in Australia. Continuing this research interest, she also published work on an association of leptin with insulin resistance in non-diabetic adolescents. Her interest and focus on functional genomics also resulted in developing possibly the first diagnostic approach for sepsis using gene expression profiling in a clinical setting. This is a major breakthrough in the field of critical care medicine in terms of development of diagnostic strategy. It addresses disease at the molecular level, capitalising on the advent of high-throughput technologies. She has applied this systems biology approach to address metabolism-related disorders in rodent and human cell culture models and is now applying this technology to address how the regulation of FoxOs can affect damage repair, chromatin remodelling, cell cycle progression and metabolism.
During her appointment at the Ramaciotti Centre she has attracted an NHMRC project grant for 2005-2007, a LIEF grant for 2006 and several equipment grants totalling over $1 million.
Potential PhD students please check the UNSW BABS website for current project information.
