Brian Morris (biologist)

Education and career

Brian Morris grew up in Adelaide, South Australia, where he graduated from the University of Adelaide in 1972. He then completed his PhD at Monash University and the University of Melbourne in 1975. From 1975–1978 he did postdoctoral research at the University of Missouri, and the University of California, San Francisco, first as a CJ Martin fellow, and then as an Advanced Fellow of the American Heart Association. He was then appointed as an academic at the University of Sydney in 1978, where he has been ever since.

Career

As an academic, Morris publicly promotes scientific research findings in his areas of expertise, including molecular biology, high blood pressure, longevity, and cervical cancer screening. He has patents awarded in the US, UK, Europe and Australia on use of polymerase chain reaction (PCR) technology in detection of human papillomavirus (HPV) – the cause of over 99% of cervical cancers – and is currently trying to bring this to the market in conjunction with a self-sampling procedure for women, so they can avoid the ordeal of a Pap smear. Human papillomavirus is sexually transmitted.

Morris believes that there is "'overwhelming' evidence to support male circumcision," and that although he does not believe that all males should undergo the procedure, Morris feels it should be in the same category as immunization. He has criticised the circumcision policy of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians, which he says is "not evidence-based and should be retracted," however his comments were rejected by the RACP. Morris has criticized anti-circumcision activists for what he says is the "cult-like devotion" they exhibit to their cause. Morris wrote the 1999 book In Favour of Circumcision; Basil Donovan, Director of the Sydney Sexual Health Centre and a Clinical Professor in the School of Public Health and Community Medicine at the same university at which Morris was employed, the University of Sydney, criticised the book as "dangerous" and "a serious disservice to parents." Other experts are also forthright in their criticism of Morris over circumcision.

In 2005, Morris appeared on several TV news programmes to suggest the introduction of a tax on junk food coupled with subsidies for healthy food to help combat the obesity epidemic.

A major theme of his lifelong research has been the important blood pressure-regulating enzyme protein renin. In the early 1980s, Morris was the first to clone the gene for human renin, as well as the first human kallikrein gene (showing that it was prostate-specific, relevant to prostate cancer screening, just as its closest relative PSA). He also cloned the first cardiac myosin heavy chain gene. He and his team were the first to elucidated the biosynthetic pathway of renin, as well as key molecular mechanisms in renin's transcriptional and posttranscriptional control. However, his first breakthrough, in the early 1970s, was the identification of the existence of an inactive precursor (pro) form of renin that could be activated by trypsin and pepsin. In 1988, Morris pioneered the field of the molecular genetics of hypertension, being the first to publish in this area, and has published extensively in this area ever since. More recently his lab has identified various splicing factors and shown how they modulate alternative splicing. In 2011, he published a study regarding global gene expression changes in ageing cells and the effects of the putative longevity factor resveratrol, a stilbenoid found in red wine.

Awards and honours

He was awarded the Royal Society of New South Wales' Edgeworth David Medal in 1985 and in 1993 the University of Sydney awarded him a DSc. In 2003 he was elected as an Honorary Fellow of the American Heart Association Council for High Blood Pressure Research. He won the Faculty of Medicine's Award for Excellence in Postgraduate Research Supervision in 2006, and The Scroll of Honour, a community service award for his public health advocacy, by Waverley Council on Australia Day in 2007. In 2010 he gave the Lewis K. Dahl Memorial lecture, an award sponsored by the Council for High Blood Pressure Research in association with the American Heart Association.