Dr. Ailis OCarroll

Experienced PhD Researcher and Consultant with a demonstrated history of working alongside the pharmaceutical and higher education industry. Skilled in Biotechnology, Cell Culture, Single Molecule Microscopy techniques as well as People Management and Scientific Communication. Strong research professional with a Bachelor of Science (BS) degree in Immunology from Trinity College, Dublin.

Postdoctoral Fellow
Company NameEMBL Australia
Dates EmployedMar 2018 – Present
Employment Duration8 mos
LocationLowy Cancer Institute, UNSW, Sydney
Consulting with and Establishing the prion deactivation efficacy of industry enzymatic detergents.

– Testing the resistance of prion strains (synuclein, ABeta, SOD1, Tau involved in widespread neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease, ALS and Taupathies) when bound to surgical steel wires against clinically relevant medical instrument reprocessing protocols, with and without the companies detergent(s).
– Developing an amplification assay based on single-molecule detection to measure log-6 decontamination from prion proteins left on surgical steel wires.

Development of Listeria monocytogenes detection assay

-There is a pressing need for a low cost, quick, high accuracy and specificity assay for the detection of bacterial pathogens in food and on environmental surfaces. The recent example of Listeria contamination in rockmelons not only put customers at risk (6 deaths in NSW), but also affected Australia’s image of one of the safest food producers in the world. Listeria has a slow incubation period and fast detection methods are required to identify the source of outbreaks- such as the latest Listeria outbreak linked to a meat-production plant in South-Africa

UNSW Australia
Dates EmployedSep 2015 – Present
Employment Duration3 yrs 2 mos
LocationLowy Cancer Institute, Kensington Campus, UNSW, Sydney, Australia
Project description: To uncover the emerging role of Prion – like protein polymerisation underlying signal transduction in innate immunity

Immunologist (First Class Honour)
Company NameTrinity College Dublin
Dates EmployedSep 2010 – Jul 2014
Employment Duration3 yrs 11 mos
LocationIreland
First Class Honours degree received
Dissertation project: Completed lab based research in Andrew Bowie’s lab: into determining the effect of DNA length and oxidation status on cytosolic DNA sensing pathways in a range of relevant cell types, with a view to defining the optimal DNA ligand for IFN I induction in each cell, as part of a final year project entitled “The Role of DNA length and oxidative status in innate immune cytosolic DNA sensing”. Received First Class Honour for dissertation.
Skills utilised:
Microscopy: phase contrast and fluorescence.
Cell culture (primary and immortalised cell lines).
Isolation of leukocytes subsets and endothelial cells.
Immunofluorescence and immunocytochemistry.
Flow cytometry.
Subcellular fractionation.
Western blotting.

Publications
Structural basis of TIR-domain-assembly formation in MAL-and MyD88-dependent TLR4 signaling
T Ve, PR Vajjhala, A Hedger, T Croll, F DiMaio, S Horsefield, X Yu, …
Nature Structural and Molecular Biology 24 (9), 743 20 2017
Single-Molecule Fluorescence Reveals the Oligomerization and Folding Steps Driving the Prion-like Behavior of ASC
Y Gambin, N Giles, A O’Carroll, M Polinkovsky, D Hunter, E Sierecki
Journal of molecular biology 430 (4), 491-508 5 2018
Cell-free formation and interactome analysis of caveolae
WR Jung, E Sierecki, M Bastiani, A O’Carroll, K Alexandrov, J Rae, …
J Cell Biol, jcb. 201707004 2 2018
Corrigendum to” Single-Molecule Fluorescence Reveals the Oligomerisation and Folding Steps Driving the Prion-like Behaviour of ASC”[J. Mol. Biol. 430 (4)(February 16, 2018) 491 …
Y Gambin, N Giles, A O’Carroll, ME Polinkovsky, DJB Hunter, E Sierecki
Journal of molecular biology 430 (8), 1263 1 2018
Effects of Pathological Mutations on the Prion-Like Polymerisation of MyD88
A O’Carroll, B Chauvin, J Brown, A Meagher, J Coyle, D Hunter, …
bioRxiv, 351726 2018
The RHIM within the M45 protein from murine cytomegalovirus forms heteromeric amyloid fibrils with RIPK1 and RIPK3
CLL Pham, M Strange, A O’Carroll, N Shanmugam, E Sierecki, Y Gambin, …
bioRxiv, 324590 2018
Prion-like protein polymerisation underlies signal transduction in innate immunity: The emergence of a universal mechanism?
A O’Carroll, T Ve, M Moustaqil, N Giles, A Bhumkar, D Hunter, B Kobe, …
The FASEB Journal 31 (1_supplement), 937.1-937.1 2017
Prion-like protein polymerisation underlies signal transduction in innate immunity: the emergence of a universal mechanism?
A O’Carroll, T Ve, D Lau, N Giles, M Moustaqil, A Bhumkar, D Hunter, …
The FASEB Journal 30 (1_supplement), 814.3-814.3