[15] During her PhD she was awarded a Lady Tata Memorial Fellowship in 1983 to study gene regulation in the laboratory of Robert Gallo at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in the USA.

[17] Her research activities also include pluripotency and reprogramming, polycomb repressor complexes in stem cells, cohesion function in gene expression and genome organisation with Ikaros family transcription factors (TFs).

Two methods, protoplast fusion and electroporation, proved successful and allowed Fisher to test whether molecular clones isolated from HIV-infected cultures could generate infectious retrovirus upon transfection.

[citation needed] Fisher showed in 1985 that molecular clones of HIV, contained within approximately 18kb of contiguous proviral DNA, were biologically active and generated cytopathic virus when introduced into primary human T-cells.

[citation needed] This refinement allowed cell-fate to be mapped in vitro and provided a system in which potential factors that shape the human T cell repertoire could be experimentally tested.

[citation needed] Fisher's group showed that Ikaros proteins unexpectedly localised to percentric heterochromatin in cycling lymphocytes in association with transcriptionally silent genes.

The development of three dimensional (3D) immuno-FISH techniques by Fisher's team, in which the protein structure and the nuclear architecture of a sample remains preserved, was critical for revealing the spatial distribution of chromosomes and the genes within the nucleus.

[citation needed] This study, together with others, established that the nuclear location, physical compaction and local chromatin environment of many genes was important for maintaining heritable silencing.

This discovery in 2003, led Fisher and Merkenschlager to hypothesis that – rather than altering the time of DNA replication – heritable gene silencing could retard chromatid separation and resolution.

[citation needed] This discovery ran contrary to the prevailing dogma of the time: that chromatin markers of actively transcribed and inactive domains were mutually exclusive.

Her nomination reads: Amanda Fisher is distinguished for her pioneering work on HIV pathogenesis, T lymphocyte development, embryonic stem cells and epigenetic gene regulation.

[17] Fisher was appointed Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in the 2017 New Year Honours for services to medical research and the public understanding of science.