Rate My Professor Donna Bond

Dr. Donna Bond is a Scientific Officer in the Department of Anatomy at the University of Otago, within the Faculty of Biomedical Sciences, Health Sciences Division. She holds a PhD from the Australian National University and a BSc (Hons) from the University of Otago. Her research summary encompasses molecular biology, genomics, and epigenomics, focusing on epigenetic mechanisms, genetic variants, and their implications in development and evolution. Bond's work addresses topics such as sex differentiation, hormone-related epigenetic aging, inflammation biomarkers, and marsupial genetics, contributing to advancements in biomedical sciences.

Bond has co-authored several impactful publications. In 2025, she published 'Variant ribosomal DNA is essential for female differentiation in zebrafish' in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, demonstrating the necessity of ribosomal DNA variants for female development in zebrafish. That year, 'The androgen clock is an epigenetic predictor of long-term male hormone exposure' appeared in PNAS, introducing an epigenetic clock based on DNA methylation at androgen-regulated loci. She also contributed to 'High-throughput, pan-leukocyte biomarkers for the detection of inflammation in human breastmilk and stool' in Frontiers in Epigenetics & Epigenomics and presented on androgen-dependent epigenetic aging at the New Zealand Medical Sciences Congress and Genetics Otago Symposium. Earlier, Bond served as first author on the complete genome assembly of the common brushtail possum (2023), aiding New Zealand pest management research. In 2024, her work on 'Coat colour in marsupials: genetic variants at the ASIP locus determine grey and black fur of the brushtail possum' was published in Royal Society Open Science. Additional contributions include leukocyte-specific DNA methylation biomarkers (2022) and methods for nucleic acid purification using paramagnetic beads (2019). These efforts highlight her role in genomic and epigenomic research.