Fiona Whelan is the first Bowdish student to defend her thesis. Fiona’s defended her thesis entitled ” “Discovery of conserved motifs in MARCO through evolutionary analyses and molecular biology”. Her work on the evolution of the class A scavenger receptors has resulted in a better understanding of their relationship and grouping as a family and has lead to interesting hints as to which regions are conserved (and are presumably important functionally) within MARCO and across all the class A scavenger receptors. She defended exceptionally well. Congratulations Fiona!

Fiona Whelan & Dr. Dawn Bowdish at her party celebrating her successful MSc defence.