Elizabeth Salisbury Dennis AC FTSE FAA (born 10 December 1943) is an Australian scientist working mainly in the area of plant molecular biology.
She completed a Bachelor of Science in chemistry and biochemistry at the University of Sydney (1964), and focused on DNA replication in bacteria during her Ph.D entitled "Studies on the Bacillus subtilis genome" (awarded in 1968).
[6] Dennis went on to study the replication of the yeast mitochondrial DNA during her post-doctoral years in the laboratory of Dr Julius Marmur in New-York (1968–1970).
Meanwhile, she had the chance to visit the Biochemistry Department of Stanford University thanks to a Fulbright Fellowship and worked in the laboratory of the Nobel Prize winner Paul Berg (1982–83).
She, together with her collaborators, cloned the gene encoding the enzyme alcohol dehydrogenase[8][9] and identified the regulatory motifs controlling its expression in response to the lack of oxygen.