Professional Experience:
1991-1994 Research Associate, Maryland Biotechnology Institute, Maryland USA
1995-2001 Senior Research Officer, Peter MacCallum Cancer Institute, Melbourne.
2002-present Lecturer, Biochemistry & Molecular. Biology,  James Cook University.

Summary of Research Experience:
As a postdoc in the US Warren discovered and cloned the Hermes element, which unlike the Drosophila P element, has a broad host range, and has been shown to be functional in a range of insect species, including Drosophila melanogaster (fruitfly), Lucilia cuprina (blowfly), and Aedes agypti (mosquito). He was awarded a grant from the USDA (with D. O’Brochta) for his work on non-Drosohilid transposable elements, which resulted in six publications and the issuing of a patent (US patient 9,614,398 "A Gene Transfer System for Insects"). In 1995 Warren was appointed to the position of Senior Research Officer at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Institute, Univ. of Melbourne, to study of the epigenetic regulation of human transposable elements, which resulted in 4 publications. In 1998 he commenced his present research focus, currently funded by the ARC, of how higher eukaryotes maintain sister-chromatid cohesion during metaphase. He cloned and characterised the Drosophila rad21 gene (Drad21) and in 2000 publised a paper in Current Biology that reported two additional features of cohesion regulation not previously reported in the literature. His co-discovery of a sub-pool of DRAD21 which does not dissociate from Drosophila chromosomes in prophase but remains at centromeres until anaphase provided the first evidence that cohesins maintain sister-chromatid cohesion until the metaphase-anaphase transition in higher eukaryotes. In addition, his observation that the DRAD21 cohesin subunit transiently associates with centrosomes and either directly or indirectly modulates astral microtubule activity is likely to have a significant impact on the field.

Sample Publications:

• Atkinson, P.W., Warren, W.D. and O’Brochta, D.A. (1993) The hobo transposable element of Drosophila excises like the Ac element of maize and can be crossmobilized in houseflies. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 90: 9693-9697.

• Woodcock, D.M. Lawler, C., Linsenmeyer, M., Doherty, J.P. and Warren, W.D. (1997). Asymmetric methylation in the hyper-methylated CpG promoter region of the human L1 retrotransposon. J. Biol. Chem. 272: 7810-7816.

• Woodcock, D.M., Linsenmeyer, M.E., Doherty, J.P. and Warren, W.D. (1999). DNA methylation in the promoter region of the p16 (CDKN2/MTS-1/INK4A) gene in human breast tumours. Brit. J. Cancer 79: 251-256.

• Warren, W.D., Steffencsen, S., Lin, E., Coelho, P., Loupart, M-L., Cobbe, N., Lee, J.Y. McKay, M., Orr-Weaver, T., Heck, M. and. Sunkel, C. (2000). The Drosophila rad21 cohesin persists at the centromere region in mitosis. Current Biology 10: 1463-1466.

• Beasley M, Xu H, Warren W, and McKay M. (2002) Conserved disruptions in the predicted coiled-coil domains of eukaryotic SMC complexes: implications for structure and function. Genome Res. 12(8):1201-9.

• Vass, S., Cotterill, S., Valdeolmillos, A.M., Barbero, J.L., Lin. E., Warren, W., and M.M.S. Heck.  (2003)  Depletion of rad21/Scc1 in

Drosophila cells leads to instability of the cohesin complex and disruption of mitotic progression.  Current Biology (in press).

LINKS:

• Drosophila Genetics Group home page
• Drosophila Rseearch Facility
• Comparative Genomics Centre home page
• James Cook University home page