My lab’s vision is to translate basic knowledge of DNA repair pathways into treatments for bone marrow failure syndromes and cancer.

We are interested in understanding the fundamentals of DNA repair pathways in both somatic and reproductive cells, with particular focus on the Fanconi anaemia pathway – essential for repair of crosslinked DNA. We are building on our and others’ advances to identify and characterise potential new treatments for diseases that are caused by problems of DNA repair.

We also focus on how pathways that maintain genome stability in somatic cells regulate repair of double-strand breaks at meiosis. The orchestrated formation and repair of these breaks are used to generate genetic diversity and keep chromosome numbers constant from one generation to the next.

Key achievements

2022-2026   Victorian Cancer Agency Mid-Career Research Fellow

2017-2020   National Health and Medical Research Council; Career Development Fellow (level 2)

2017-2019   Maddie Riewoldt’s Vision Fellow

2013-2017   Australia Research Council; Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (awarded but declined)

DNA Repair & Recombination

Our vision is to translate basic knowledge of DNA repair pathways to treatments for cancer, bone marrow failure syndromes, and infertility.

Lab head: Associate Professor Wayne Crismani

View lab profile

Selected publications

S. Novakovic, V. Tsui, T. Semple, L. Martelotto, D. J. McCarthy, and W. Crismani. SSNIP-seq: A simple and rapid method for isolation of single-sperm nucleic acid for high-throughput sequencing. PloS one, 17(9):e0275168, 2022

V. Tsui, R. Lyu, S. Novakovic, J. M. Stringer, J. E. Dunleavy, E. Granger, T. Semple, A. Leitchter, L. Martelotto, D. J. Merriner, et al. Fancm regulates meiotic double-strand break repair pathway choice in mammals. bioRxiv, 2022

M. Sharp, R. Bythell-Douglas, A. J. Deans, and W. Crismani. The Fanconi anemia ubiquitin e3 ligase complex as an anti-cancer target. Molecular Cell, 81(11):2278–2289, 2021.

R. Lyu, V. Tsui, D. J. McCarthy, and W. Crismani. Personalized genome structure via single gamete sequencing. Genome biology, 22(1):1–19, 2021.

M. Sharp, V. Murphy, S. Van Twest, W. Tan, J. Lui, K. Simpson, A. Deans, and W. Crismani. Methodology for the identification of small molecule inhibitors of the Fanconi anaemia ubiquitin E3 ligase complex. Scientific Reports, 10(7959):1–11, 2020.

Stevan Novakovic, Vanessa Tsui. SSNIP-seq: A simple and rapid method for isolation of single-sperm nucleic acid for high-throughput sequencing. PLoS One, 17(9):e0275168, 2022.

V. Tsui and W. Crismani. The Fanconi anemia pathway and fertility. Trends in Genetics, 35(3):199–214, 2019.

Full list of peer-reviewed publications and patents can be found here: https://scholar.google.com.au/citations?user=JnUjaNIAAAAJ&hl=en

ORCID profile: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0143-8293

ORCID profile: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0143-8293