biology

Karen Steel

Karen Steel is a biology topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Karen Steel rather than just read about it. In short: Karen Penelope Steel is a British scientist who studies the genetics of deafness, using the mouse as a model to identify the genes involved and to understand the molecular, cellular and physiological mechanisms involved. She is Professor of Sensory Function at the Wolfson Centre for Age-Related Diseases, King's College London.

Key takeaways

Karen Steel belongs to biology; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Karen Steel to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Karen Steel from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Karen Penelope Steel is a British scientist who studies the genetics of deafness, using the mouse as a model to identify the genes involved and to understand the molecular, cellular and physiological mechanisms involved. She is Professor of Sensory Function at the Wolfson Centre for Age-Related Diseases, King's College London. Previously she was Principal Investigator of the Genetics of Deafness research programme at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute. She had a leading role in the collaboration that uncovered Myo7a, the first gene to be implicated in deafness in mice and in humans. Most recently, she led the discovery of Mir-96 microRNA that is implicated in progressive hearing loss in mice and humans. Together with Christine Petit, Steel won the Royal Society Brain Prize 2012, for pioneering work on the genetics of hearing and deafness.

Early life In her early academic years, Steel was originally interested in studying English. Her first exposure to biology, and also what solidified her biological science career path, was in sixth grade. Steel had the opportunity to hear Dorothy Hodgkin speak at Bristol University about insulin, marking her first time encountering a woman in science. This experience greatly influenced her interest in studying genetics.

Education Steel obtained her first degree from Leeds University. She then received her PhD from University College London for her investigatory work into the inner ear in several deaf mouse mutants. She set up the mouse genetics and deafness research programme at the newly established MRC Institute of Hearing Research in Nottingham. Following a second postdoc in Munich, she returned to Nottingham to lead mouse genetics research.

Research Steel studies the genetics behind deafness, mainly focusing on the genetics of mice to identify the genes involved as well as to further understand the molecular, cellular and physiological mechanisms involved with being deaf. This led to Steel developing a screening technique, a triaging process, that allowed for the characterisation of mutant mice that have hearing and imbalance issues. This led to ability to find and characterise the specific genes involved in these issues, with these issues being caused by altered hair cells or auditory parts. Steel's mouse genetic project also involved knocking out various genes not extensively studied and observing whether these genes are essential or nonessential in the mouse hearing. Steel and her research group have published phenotypic descriptions of over 80 different mouse mutants. Currently, her research is focused on the progressive loss of auditory functions in which she uses the mouse models to diagram the timeline of auditory loss in humans. She also looks for specific mutated genes that are known to contribute and lead to hearing loss, allowing her to target genes that could be potentially targeted in treatments for progressive hearing loss. As of 2014, Steel and her team has found genes involved in progressive hearing loss and has moved forward in identifying the various pathways that these genes are a part of.

Awards and honours Recipient of the Kresge-Mirmelstein prize for excellence in hearing research, New Orleans, 1998 Elected Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences, London, 2004 Elected Council member of Association for Research in Otolaryngology (2004–2008) Elected President of International Mammalian Genome Society (2007–2012) Edith Whetnall lecturer, Section of Otology of the Royal Society of Medicine, London, 2008 Elected Fellow of the Royal Society, London, 2009 Grete Lundbeck European Brain Research Prize, 2012 Award of Merit, Association for Research in Otolaryngology, 2013 The asteroid 24734 Kareness was named after Steel by its discoverer, Steel's brother.

References

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Karen Steel

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Karen Steel claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In biology, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Karen Steel before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Karen Steel ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Karen Steel

In research: Karen Steel appears in biology research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Karen Steel in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Karen Steel is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Alumni of University College London, Alumni of the University of Leeds, Auditory scientists, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Karen Steel outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Karen Steel in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Karen Steel means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Karen Steel out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Karen Steel in simple terms?

Why does Karen Steel matter?

Because it connects several biology ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Karen Steel?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Karen Steel.