Andrew King - Australian Museum

Staff profile: Andrew King

Position title:: Technical Officer
Section:: DNA Laboratory
Branch:: Cultural Heritage & Science Initiatives
Division:: Research & Collections
Phone:: +612 9320 6292
Email:: Contact Andrew King using the form below

Profile

I studied Environmental Biology as part of an Applied Science Degree at the Institute of Technology (now UTS) in the early 80’s. A brief stint in the NSW public service led me to a position at CSIRO Division of Biotechnology at North Ryde in 1984.

Most of my experience has come from working in the Biotechnology field. I have worked on gene expression in macrophages, genotyping Human Papiloma Virus, developing and testing DNAzyme technology against cancer targets, developing Anti-viral therapeutics that incorporate Ribozyme and antisense technologies , preclinical characterisation of anti-HIV therapeutics, Hepatitis-C Viral RNA based drug screening and development of robotic high throughput gene expression screening assays.

After 24 years of biomedical research (mostly private industry) it was time for a change.

In 2008 I joined the Australian Museum as a Technical Officer working on termite genetics (Coptotermes lacteus and Nasutitermes exitiosus) at the Museum with Dr Nathan Lo.

Since then I have worked in the DNA Lab on a variety of projects. Some of which include: sequencing nuclear genes of freshwater isopods from Kakadu, genetic analysis of locally endangered White-Fronted Chats, generating reference data for bat species across Australia and forensic identification of bird/bat-strike from Australian airports.

I love the fact that after 25 years in research I still get a kick out of discovering something new about the natural world. You never know what discovery is around the corner.