biology

Kat Holt

Kat Holt 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 Kat Holt rather than just read about it. In short: Kathryn "Kat" Elizabeth Holt is an Australian computational biologist specializing in infectious disease genomics. She is a professor at Monash University's Department of Infectious Diseases and a professor of Microbial Systems Genomics at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM).

Key takeaways

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

Reference excerpt

Kathryn "Kat" Elizabeth Holt is an Australian computational biologist specializing in infectious disease genomics. She is a professor at Monash University's Department of Infectious Diseases and a professor of Microbial Systems Genomics at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM). Her current research focuses on investigating the evolution and dissemination of antimicrobial resistance. In 2015, Holt received the L'Oréal-UNESCO International Rising Talent Award.

Early life and education The daughter of two biomedical scientists, Holt grew up in an environment where science was a frequent topic of discussion. From 2002 to 2005, she was a research assistant at the Telethon Institute for Child Health Research. In 2004, Holt graduated from the University of Western Australia with Bachelor of Science and Bachelor of Arts degrees in Biochemistry, Applied Statistics, and Philosophy, as well as Honours in Genetics with a focus on plant gene expression. One year after completing her undergraduate education, in 2005, Holt worked as a research technician in the Bioinformatics Division of the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research (WEHI). Shortly afterward, she began her pursuit of a PhD in Molecular Biology from the Wellcome Sanger Trust Institute (WSTI) and the University of Cambridge. Her doctoral research focusing on the genomics of typhoid fever was supervised by Gordan Dougan, Julian Parkhill, and Duncan Maskell. Holt continued her education at the University of Melbourne, where she obtained her Master of Epidemiology degree in 2011.

Career and research Holt conducted postdoctoral research as a research fellow at the University of Melbourne Department of Microbiology and Immunology from 2010 to 2012. She then became a senior research fellow at the same university in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and the Bio21 Institute from 2012 to 2018. In 2015, Holt was named a L'Oréal-UNESCO International Rising Talent. In April 2018, Holt was appointed a professor of Microbial Systems Genomics at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) in the Department of Pathogen Molecular Biology. Additionally, Holt has been a professor of research at Monash University in the Department of Infectious Diseases since January 2019.

Publications Heaton, T., Rowe, J., Turner, S., Aalberse, R.C., de Klerk, D., Suriyaarachchi, D., Serralha, M., Holt, B.J., Hollams, E., Yerkovich, S., Holt, K., Sly, P.D., Goldblatt, J., Le Souef, P. & Holt, P.G. (2005). An immunoepidemiological approach to asthma: identification of in vitro T-cell response patterns associated with different wheezing phenotypes amongst 11 year olds. The Lancet, 365(9454):142-149. doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(05)17704-6 Holt, K.E., Thomson, N.R., Wain, J., Langridge, G., Hasan, R., Bhutta, Z.A., Quail, M.A., Norbertczak, H., Walker, D., Simmonds, M., White, B., Bason, N., Mungall K., Dougan, G. & Parkhill, J. (2009). Pseudogene accumulation in the evolutionary histories of Salmonella enterica serovars Paratyphi A and Typhi. BMC Genomics, 10:36. doi:10.1186/1471-2164-10-36 Rohde, H., Qin, J., Cui, Y., Li, D., Loman, N.J., Hentschke, M., Chen, W., Pu, F., Peng, Y., Li, J., Xi, F., Li, S., Li, Y., Zhang, Z., Yang, X., Zhao, M., Wang, P., Guan, Y., Cen, Z., Zhao, X., Christner, M., Kobbe, R., Loos, S., Oh, J., Yang, L., Danchin, A., Gao, G.F., Song, Y., Li, Y., Yang, H., Wang, J., Xu, J., Pallen, M.J., Wang, J., Aepfelbacher, M., Yang, R., E. coli O104:H4 Genome Analysis Crowd-Sourcing Consortium (Holt, K.E., Studholme, D.J., Feldgarden, M., Manrique, M.) (2011). Open-source genomic analysis of Shiga-toxin-producing E. coli O104:H4. The New England Journal of Medicine, 365(8):718-724. doi:10.1056/NEJMoa1107643 Holt, K.E., Baker, S., Weill, F.X., Holmes, E.C., Kitchen, A., Yu, J., Sangal, V., Brown, D.J., Coia, J.E., Kim, D.W., Choi S.Y., Kim, S.H., da Silveira, W.D., Pickard, D.J., Farrar, J.J., Parkhill, J., Dougan, G. & Thomson, N.R. (2012). Shigella sonnei genome sequencing and phylogenetic analysis indicate recent global dissemination from Europe. Nature Genetics, 44(9):1056-1059. doi:10.1038/ng.2369

Awards and recognitions 2013 - L'Oréal Australia & New Zealand For Women in Science Fellowship 2014 - National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) Research Excellence Award for the Top-Ranked Career Development Fellowship 2015 - L'Oréal-UNESCO International Rising Talent 2016 - Georgina Sweet Award for Women in Quantitative Biomedical Science 2017 - Gottschalk Medal for Medical Research 2017 - Viertel Foundation Senior Medical Research Fellowship 2017 - HHMI-Gates International Research Scholar

References

External links

Video 2013 L'Oréal For Women in Science Fellow Kathryn Holt video by L'Oréal For Women in Science Australia & New Zealand Kathryn Holt: The Future of Infectious Diseases talk at the 'Schrödinger at 75 - The Future of Biology' conference held 5–6 September 2018 by Trinity College Dublin

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Kat Holt

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Kat Holt 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 Kat Holt 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 Kat Holt 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 Kat Holt

In research: Kat Holt 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 Kat Holt 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: Kat Holt is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 21st-century Australian biologists, 21st-century Australian scientists, 21st-century Australian women scientists, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Kat Holt 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 Kat Holt in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Kat Holt 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 Kat Holt out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Kat Holt in simple terms?

Why does Kat Holt 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 Kat Holt?

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 Kat Holt.