Rate My Professor David Markie

Dr David Markie serves as a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Pathology and Molecular Medicine at the University of Otago's Dunedin School of Medicine, Faculty of Medicine. He earned his BMedSc, MB ChB, and PhD from the University of Otago. His academic interests center on clinical biochemistry and molecular genetics, focusing on the identification, characterisation, and functional analysis of genes that contribute to the development of colorectal cancer. This encompasses genes responsible for rare inherited predispositions to cancer, such as Peutz-Jeghers syndrome, and genes defective in sporadic forms of colorectal cancer. His research approaches include linkage analysis in Peutz-Jeghers syndrome pedigrees, mutation surveys of DNA mismatch repair genes and mitotic spindle checkpoint genes in sporadic colorectal cancers, use of yeast systems to analyse human DNA mismatch repair gene variants, and functional genomics approaches to understand the mitotic spindle checkpoint pathway. In the Markie Laboratory for Molecular Genetics, he studies genes that cause human genetic disorders using exome sequence analysis and functional studies.

David Markie has co-authored key publications advancing genetic research, including 'Familial Currarino Syndrome Caused by a Deep Intronic Variant' (Rare, 2025), 'Analysis of the DISC1 translocation partner (11q14.3) in genetic risk of schizophrenia' (2012), 'Trans-ancestral dissection of urate- and gout-associated major loci' (Journal of Human Genetics, 2021), 'Tuberous sclerosis complex: a complex case' (2022), and 'Heat shock induces chromosome loss in the yeast Candida albicans' (Current Genetics, 1985). He has supervised multiple PhD theses, such as 'Genetic insights into neurogenesis through the study of primary microcephaly' (B.J. Halliday, 2021), 'Linking cohesin-dependent transcription with cell pluripotency' (J.M. Rhodes, 2012), and 'The Genetic and Biological Characterisation of Complex Skeletal Diseases' (M. Gray, 2013). In 2014, Dr Markie received major funding for innovative Otago health research in pathology involving genomic sequence analysis.