Mertonian wins Thomas Henry Huxley Award and Marsh Prize for zoology thesis

Merton alumnus Shan Quah (2011) has been awarded the Thomas Henry Huxley Award and Marsh Prize by the Zoological Society of London (ZSL). The award recognises the best PhD thesis in a zoological subject from any UK University for the year 2016. Shan's DPhil thesis, supervised by Professor Peter Holland, was entitled 'Conservation and innovation – the evolution of the metazoan microRNA landscape and its contribution to reproduction and development'. Shan received their award, a bronze medal and £1,000 prize sponsored by The Marsh Christian Trust, at the ZSL awards ceremony in London on Tuesday 20 June.

Shan's thesis presented a set of complementary studies focused on the evolution of microRNA – molecules that function as post-transcriptional modulators of gene expression and thus can influence development. For their research, Shan used diverse technical approaches, from bioinformatics analysis of genomes and small RNA sequencing, through to wet-lab functional molecular work. There were numerous important findings, including the formulation of a model of microRNA evolution that emphasises gene loss as much as gene gain; and the detection of a new microRNA that resides in the intron of an embryonic patterning gene and discovery of the target of that microRNA in the same developmental pathway - The award citation described this as "an extraordinarily rare achievement!"

At the time Shan put their thesis forward for this award, they had already published four papers from it – all in very good journals. Members of the Awards Committee were unanimous in their decision that Shan was "a richly deserving winner."