Neil Alexander Steven Brockdorff (born 1958) is a British biochemist who is a Wellcome Trust Principal Research Fellow and professor in the department of biochemistry at the University of Oxford.

[7] His interests are in the molecular basis of X-inactivation, the process that evolved in mammals to equalise X chromosome gene expression levels in XX females relative to XY males.

[7][8] In earlier work Brockdorff demonstrated that an unusual functional RNA molecule, XIST, controls the X inactivation process.

[9][10] Building on this finding he has elucidated key steps in XIST gene regulation during early development, and has defined major pathways through which XIST RNA induces chromosome wide gene silencing.

[citation needed] “All text published under the heading 'Biography' on Fellow profile pages is available under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.” --Royal Society Terms, conditions and policies at the Wayback Machine (archived 2016-11-11) This article incorporates text available under the CC BY 4.0 license.