GENETICS - Key Persons
Caroline Dean has determined the mechanistic basis of how plants use seasonal temperature signals to judge when to flower. Her investigations of why some plants overwinter before flowering, how plants monitor winter cold, and how they adapt to different climates, elucidated a cellular memory mechanism that senses and remembers long-term temperature exposure.
Using genetic approaches at every step she revealed a conserved silencing mechanism involving sense-antisense transcription and Polycomb epigenetic regulation. The target is the Arabidopsis floral repressor gene, FLC, a major evolutionary node regulating developmental timing in the Brassicaceae. Her work has revealed important general concepts on epigenetic switching, the role of non-coding transcripts in transcriptional dynamics, and how non-coding single-nucleotide polymorphism can modulate silencing to underpin adaptation.
Her discovery on the thermosensory mechanisms enabling cells to extract information from long-term exposure of noisy environmental cues has transformed thinking in the field. This molecular understanding will have huge implications for fragile ecosystems and agricultural practice as the extremes in our climate increase.
She was awarded a Bachelor of Arts degree in Biology (1978) and a DPhil in Biology (1982) at the University of York. She then spent 5 years in a start-up biotech company Advanced Genetic Sciences in California, before starting her lab at John Innes Centre (1988). She has been awarded the Wolf Prize in Agriculture (2020), Royal Medal (2020), American Academy Arts & Science (2020), Novartis prize, Biochemistry Society (2019), L'Oréal-UNESCO European Laureate (2018), Royal Society Darwin Medal, (2016), FEBS-EMBO Woman in Science (2015), Foreign Member of the National Academy of Sciences (2008), Genetics Society Medal 2007, Fellow of the Royal Society (2004), EMBO Member (1999).
David Baulcombe is the Regius Professor of Botany at the University of Cambridge.
As a botany undergraduate at Leeds University in the 1970s he was inspired by models of genetic regulation that had been recently published by Britten and Davidson. For his PhD at the University of Edinburgh he wanted to test these models using plants and he chose to use an artichoke tissue culture system in which a plant hormone stimulated changes in gene expression. He was not able to make a lot of progress in this system, but during postdocs in Canada and the USA other similar plant hormone systems turned out to be a bit more rewarding.
David then started his career as an independent scientist at the Plant Breeding Institute in Cambridge. Thereafter, he joined the Sainsbury Laboratory in Norwich. In 2007 he became the Professor of Botany at Cambridge University.
David Baulcombe's attention had turned to viruses and virus resistance in plants and he discovered the power of viruses as experimental tools to probe biology. He realized that there were similarities between viral defense mechanisms and gene silencing in plants and this eventually led him to the discovery of small RNAs. This discovery has had profound implications for the investigation of gene regulation in a very wide variety of animals, fungi and plants and led to the development of tools for manipulating of gene expression experimentally. Using the model organism Arabidopsis, his lab was able to identify some of the key molecular players in this gene silencing mechanism.
David Baulcombe showed that RNA silencing can spread systemically throughout the plant and that it also plays an important role in protecting plant genomes from endogenous transposable elements as well as from viruses. This work led David Baulcombe into the field of Epigenetics - gene silencing triggered by small interfering RNAs (siRNAs) can be inherited, even between generations. Some of his recent work indicates that RNA silencing and epigenetics play a role in hybrid vigor. Taking this work to the next level, David is developing methods to improve the heritable characters of crops without modifying their genome, but rather using RNA to target epigenetic modifications to the chromosomes of crop plants.
David's current research includes studying RNA silencing in a single cell alga Chlamydomonas, and genetically engineering maize to resist a lethal disease that is a problem in Kenya and nearby regions of Africa. He is also exploring artificial evolution, using random mutagenesis to select mutant forms of the NB-LRR proteins that collectively mediate resistance to a huge range of viruses, bacteria, fungi and insects, but which individually are specific to one or a few plant pests and pathogens. David Baulcombe is generating new NB-LRR proteins that confer broader spectrum disease resistance than the progenitor wild type.
Michael Bevan studied biochemistry at Auckland University in New Zealand before moving to Cambridge University to study for a PhD...
Job Titles:
- Professor of Evolutionary Ecology at the University of Edinburgh
Loeske Kruuk is Professor of Evolutionary Ecology at the University of Edinburgh and the Australian National University. Her research focuses on...
Job Titles:
- Assistant Professor of Cellular and Molecular
Ludmil Alexandrov is an Assistant Professor of Cellular and Molecular Medicine and Bioengineering at the University of California, San Diego....
Mary Frances Lyon was born in Norwich, England in 1925 to Clifford James Lyon and Louise Frances Lyon (nee Kirby). Mary received a grammar school education and recalls a set of books on wild flowers, birds and trees that she won in any competition, which sparked her interest in biology at a young age. She went on to read zoology, physiology and biochemistry at Girton College, Cambridge in 1943. At Girton, Mary was named the Sophia Adelaide Turle Scholar (1944) and received the Gertrude Gwendolen Crewdson Prize (1945). During her time at Girton, the fascinating advances in experimental embryology of the 1930's caught Mary's attention; she was also much influenced by the writings of C. H. Waddington which included his books on genetics. It seemed to her that genes must underlie all embryological development. This was a relatively new idea at the time, genetics not even being taught as a degree subject.
Mary consequently took a course in genetics by the eminent statistician and theoretical geneticist R.A. Fisher, with whom she later started a PhD. For her PhD, Mary decided to study a balance defect in one of the mutants in Fisher's lab. She however later moved to Douglas Falconer's lab in Edinburgh for better facilities to complete her PhD. After obtaining a PhD, Mary was employed to study the genetic hazards of radiation by means of mutagenesis experiments with mice in a group led by T. C. Carter in Edinburgh. The work was funded by an MRC funded grant obtained by Waddington, the head of genetics department. Carter's group eventually moved to MRC Radiobiology unit at Harwell, in Oxfordshire where Mary remained for the rest of her career. Many discoveries coming from Mary's career were offshoots of the study of these radiation induced mutations in mice; often being investigated in her spare time. X-linked mutant genes, for example, gave mottled or dappled coats in heterozygous animals. Mary worked out that the colour patches could be produced by the action of one or other of the two X-chromosomes in female cells. She proposed the idea of X- chromosome inactivation by which early in development one of the two X-chromosomes is inactivated, which she later extended to all mammals. This hypothesis of X-inactivation is also widely referred to as lyonization after Mary. Mary's extensive work on the t-complex, a genetic peculiarity found in wild-type mice, also came out of work on radiation. Mary also made major contributions to understanding environmental mutagenesis. Her work on effects of low dose radiation on female germ-cells mutation in mammals indicated that only a fraction of mutation is due to low dose environmental radiation.
In 1962, Mary took over as head of the genetics section of the Radiobiology unit at Harwell. Here she broadened the expertise of the unit by introducing cytogenetics, work on biochemical genetic markers and early pre- and post-implantation mouse embryo manipulation. Mouse embryo banking started at MRC Harwell under Mary's leadership, following collaboration with David Whittingham's laboratory in Cambridge. Today this has taken the form of FESA (Frozen Embryo and Sperm Archive) the sole public UK archiving and distribution centre for mouse strains. In 1986, Mary officially retired as the head of the Genetics Division, but continued to play an active role in the science of the unit for a very long time after. In 2004 the Medical Research Council opened a large centre at Harwell called the Mary Lyon Centre which is a national facility for mouse functional genomics, providing world-class expertise, tools and space to generate mouse models of human disease in keeping with Mary's contribution to science.
Named after the distinguished geneticist Mary Lyon FRS, this award was established in 2015 to reward outstanding research in genetics to scientists who are in the middle of their research career. The Mary Lyon medal will be awarded annually, and the winner will be invited to present a lecture at one of the Genetics Society scientific meetings.
Job Titles:
- Lecturer
- Professor Dame Caroline Dean
- Professor Dame Linda Partridge
- Professor Eric Lander
- Professor Mary - Claire King
- Professor SIr David Baulcombe
- Professor William G. Hill
The Mendel Medal 2023 has been awarded to Professor Dame Caroline Dean for her unique contribution towards understanding temporal control of flowering and the epigenetic mechanisms underlying vernalisation.
On hearing that she has been awarded the Mendel Medal, Linda said: "I am most honoured and delighted to be awarded the Mendel Medal. As an ex-President of the Genetics Society this award is of particular significance to me."
The Genetics Society is delighted to announce that Professor William G. Hill, University of Edinburgh, has accepted the 2019 Mendel Medal, awarded by president, Professor Laurence Hurst.
The Genetics Society is delighted to announce that Prof. Mary-Claire King, of the University of Washington, has accepted the 2018 Mendel Medal. Mary-Claire has made major contributions across an amazing breadth of genetics and genomics. During her PhD (1976) with Allan Wilson, she was the first to show the high level of conservation between human and chimpanzee genomes. In the face of much scepticism at the time that genes could contribute to common disease, in 1990 she was the first to show that there was a gene (later identified as Brca1) that predisposed for early onset human breast and ovarian cancer, and this discovery revolutionised human genetics.
Moreover, Mary-Claire has shown how genetics can be used for the greater human good. She first applied her genetics skills to human rights work in 1984, when she began working with the ‘Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo' in Argentina to identify missing persons, ultimately identifying 59 children, born to political dissents in prison and who were then "disappeared" by the Argentine military dictatorship. These children were illegally "adopted" by military families and Mary-Claire's work helped to return them to their biological families.
Job Titles:
- Head of the Reprogramming and Chromatin Laboratory at the MRC Clinical Sciences Centre
Petra Hajkova is the head of the Reprogramming and Chromatin Laboratory at the MRC Clinical Sciences Centre in London and...
Mary-Claire King has since worked with numerous human rights organizations, such as Physicians for Human Rights and Amnesty International, to identify missing people in countries including Argentina, Chile, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Mexico, Rwanda, the Balkans (Croatia and Serbia), and the Philippines. King's lab has also provided DNA identification for the U.S. Army, the United Nations, and the U.N.'s war crimes tribunals.
Job Titles:
- EMBO Member
- Head of Cellular Genetics at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute
Sarah Teichmann is Head of Cellular Genetics at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute. Her work focuses on deciphering the immune system with genomics and bioinformatics approaches. She co-chairs the international Human Cell Atlas Consortium together with Aviv Regev (Broad Institute)
Sarah did her PhD at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge, UK with Dr Cyrus Chothia, FRS and was a Beit Memorial Fellow at University College London with Professor Dame Janet Thornton, FMedSci, FRS. She started her group at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in 2001. In 2013, she moved to the Wellcome Trust Genome Campus in Hinxton, Cambridge, jointly with the EMBL-European Bioinformatics Institute and the Sanger Institute. In January 2016 she became Head of the Cellular Genetics Programme at the Sanger Institute. She is also a Director of research in the Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge and Senior Research Fellow at Churchill College.
Sarah is an EMBO member and a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences, and her work has been recognized by a number of UK and international prizes, including the Lister Prize, Biochemical Society Colworth Medal, Royal Society Crick Lecture and EMBO Gold Medal.
We are delighted to announce that Professor Stanislas Leibler of the Institute of Advanced Study Princeton and The Rockefeller University New York, has been awarded...
Bill Hill is one of the world's leading quantitative geneticists, with a distinguished research career spanning 40 years, focused on the variability in complex traits arising from the joint effects of genetic and environmental factors. Raised on a Hertfordshire farm (that the family still owns), Bill came into genetics via an interest in livestock improvement. After studying Agriculture at Wye College London and Genetics at UC Davis, Bill moved to Edinburgh to undertake a PhD in quantitative and population genetics with Alan Robertson. Apart from occasional periods abroad to work with his many collaborators, he has stayed in Edinburgh since, building on the historical strength in quantitative genetics developed by Douglas Falconer, Alan Robertson and others.
Bill's research is primarily theoretical, using mathematical and computer models of the behaviour of genes in populations to understand the genetic basis of quantitatively varying traits. His contributions have included studies of how genetic variation is maintained in natural populations, and how selection (both natural and artificial) changes the structure of genetic variation. He has made numerous very influential advances in our understanding of the effects of finite population size and mutation on variability and selection responses, notably the role of mutation in maintaining continued responses to selection. In addition to his purely scientific work, he has made many important contributions to the application of genetics to animal improvement, which have had a major impact on the livestock breeding industry. He is a sought-after consultant by both public agencies and private businesses in this area.
Of especial importance has been his work on linkage disequilibrium, the non-random associations between genetic variants at different sites in the genome. Such associations now provide an immensely important tool for geneticists seeking to map and identify genes involved in disease and other complex traits, and Bill's work provided a basic framework for modelling and analysing linkage disequilibrium, which he went on to apply to genetic mapping. As a PhD student with Alan Robertson, Bill demonstrated how selection acting at a locus interferes with that happening simultaneously at linked loci. The Hill-Robertson effect has become one of the most influential ideas in population genetics, finding a new lease of life in its ability to explain patterns of molecular evolution and diversity revealed by the genomic revolution. Within recent years, his work has helped to shape our understanding of what genome-scale data sets can tell us about complex traits and relatedness within populations.
Bill has served with distinction in several important academic administrative posts, culminating in the position of Dean of the Faculty of Science and Engineering at the University of Edinburgh until his official retirement in 2002. He continues to be highly active in the fields of quantitative genetics and animal breeding and has inspired many generations of scientists through his teaching and supervision. He was elected to the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1979, the Royal Society of London in 1985 and appointed OBE in 2004, in part for his contribution to the UK animal breeding industry. Bill has been an honorary member of the Genetics Society for many years, and fittingly, will present his lecture at the "A Century of Genetics" conference to be held November 2019, Edinburgh.