After receiving her D.Phil. at Oxford in 1952, she worked together with Michie in London at University College and then at The Royal Veterinary College, where they became interested in the issue of nature versus nurture in determining phenotypic characteristics. Their work, together with that of their subsequent colleague John Biggers, undermined the prevalent assumption that the genetic uniformity of inbred mice led to phenotypic uniformity. Because inbred mice lack the buffering provided by heterozygosity, for some parameters they proved more variable than randomly bred mice; the least variable mice were the genetically uniform F1 progeny from crosses between inbred strains in which heterozygosity is restored. Their demonstration that some of the variability of inbreds was due to the 'poor' uterine environment of inbred mothers was linked to their development of techniques for embryo transfer to surrogate mothers and, with John Biggers, preimplantation embryo culture (Nature 181, 1147–1148; 1958 and Nature 182, 877–878; 1958).
In 1959, Anne moved to Edinburgh to join the ARC Institute of Animal Genetics, headed by C.H. Waddington, where she remained until 1974. Early in this period, Anne foresaw the potential of the chimeric mouse model being developed by A.K. Tarkowski (with whom she received the Japan Prize in 2002) for studying the relative importance of 'nature versus nurture' at the cellular level and for identifying cell-autonomous gene functions. She subsequently published a seminal volume, Mammalian Chimaeras (Cambridge University Press, 1976). In 1974 Anne was asked to set up the MRC Mammalian Development Unit (MDU) at University College in London, which she directed until its closure in 1992. During this period, Anne remained actively involved in her own research, and with other members of the Unit she published key papers relating to her interests in germ cell development and sex determination. Her penetrating studies of sex-reversed XX Sxr mice—in particular, two seminal studies published in Nature (300, 446–448; 1982 and 312, 552–525; 1984)—had a huge impact on the field of sex determination and Y-linked gene functions. Robin Lovell-Badge has acknowledged that Anne's work, together with her “firm encouragement” during his time at the MDU, contributed greatly to his eventual success in identifying and cloning the testis-determining gene Sry. After the closure of the MDU, Anne moved to the Gurdon Institute in Cambridge, where she continued to be active in research until her death.
