MENTEE – Sarah Garnish

Sarah is a third year PhD student at The Walter and Eliza Hall Institute (WEHI) working in the Inflammation Division. She completed a Bachelor of Science at The University of Melbourne in 2017, majoring in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and completed her honours in 2018 at WEHI.

For her honours year she joined the previous Cell Signaling and Cell death division. Her project focused on the programmed cell death pathway, necroptosis, and the terminal effector protein MLKL. She is now continuing her study of necroptosis and MLKL during her PhD.

Sarah’s project involves using a range of different techniques, including traditional molecular biology approaches, cell biology and mouse models. One of her projects examines the underlying mechanism of MLKL phosphorylation and activation using molecular and cell biology. She also studies the effect of high frequency MLKL polymorphisms using mouse models of disease.

Between completing her honours and starting her PhD Sarah worked as a research assistant on a commercial drug discovery project designing novel inhibitors/modulators of cell death, specifically necroptosis.