Bill Earnshaw

Last updated

Bill Earnshaw
FRS FRSE FMedSci
Born
William Charles Earnshaw
Education Lenox School for Boys
Alma mater Colby College (BS), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (PhD)
Awards EMBO Member (1999) [1]
Scientific career
Institutions
Thesis The Structure of Bacteriophage p22 and its Assembly Intermediates  (1977)
Website

William Charles Earnshaw is an American biologist who is Professor of Chromosome Dynamics at the University of Edinburgh, [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] where he has been a Wellcome Trust Principal Research Fellow since 1996. [8] [9]

Contents

Education

Earnshaw was educated at Lenox School for Boys, Colby College and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) where he was awarded a PhD in 1977 for research on Enterobacteria phage P22 supervised by Jonathan King. [10] [11] [12] [13] [14]

Career and research

Earnshaw completed postdoctoral research at the University of Cambridge with Aaron Klug and Ron Laskey [15] [16] and at the University of Geneva with Ulrich Laemmli. [17] [18] Following this, he moved to the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, working in Tom Pollard's [19] department of cell biology for 13 years. [8] His former doctoral students include Jan Bergmann, [20] Anca Petruti-Mot, [21] Susana Ribeiro, [22] Laura Wood, [23] Zhenjie Xu, [24] and Nikolaj Zuleger. [25]

Awards and honours

Earnshaw was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 2013. [26] His certificate of election reads:

Bill Earnshaw is distinguished for studies of mitotic chromosome structure and segregation. His pioneering use of scleroderma patient sera identified the first centromeric proteins and recent studies employing human synthetic artificial chromosomes are mapping the epigenetic landscape required for kinetochore assembly. He discovered the "chromosomal passenger complex" of INCENP, Aurora B kinase, Survivin and Borealin – a major regulator of mitosis and cytokinesis. His proteomic analysis of mitotic chromosomes continues to provide new insights into kinetochore composition and function. Earnshaw also developed the first system reproducing apoptotic execution in vitro, and used it to identify the first apoptotic caspase substrate. [27]

Earnshaw is also an elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (FRSE), the Academy of Medical Sciences (FMedSci) and a member of the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO). [1]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Centromere</span> Specialized DNA sequence of a chromosome that links a pair of sister chromatids

The centromere links a pair of sister chromatids together during cell division. This constricted region of chromosome connects the sister chromatids, creating a short arm (p) and a long arm (q) on the chromatids. During mitosis, spindle fibers attach to the centromere via the kinetochore.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mitosis</span> Process in which chromosomes are replicated and separated into two new identical nuclei

Mitosis is a part of the cell cycle in which replicated chromosomes are separated into two new nuclei. Cell division by mitosis is an equational division which gives rise to genetically identical cells in which the total number of chromosomes is maintained. Mitosis is preceded by the S phase of interphase and is followed by telophase and cytokinesis, which divide the cytoplasm, organelles, and cell membrane of one cell into two new cells containing roughly equal shares of these cellular components. The different stages of mitosis altogether define the mitotic phase of a cell cycle—the division of the mother cell into two daughter cells genetically identical to each other.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Spindle checkpoint</span> Cell cycle checkpoint

The spindle checkpoint, also known as the metaphase-to-anaphase transition, the spindle assembly checkpoint (SAC), the metaphase checkpoint, or the mitotic checkpoint, is a cell cycle checkpoint during metaphase of mitosis or meiosis that prevents the separation of the duplicated chromosomes (anaphase) until each chromosome is properly attached to the spindle. To achieve proper segregation, the two kinetochores on the sister chromatids must be attached to opposite spindle poles. Only this pattern of attachment will ensure that each daughter cell receives one copy of the chromosome. The defining biochemical feature of this checkpoint is the stimulation of the anaphase-promoting complex by M-phase cyclin-CDK complexes, which in turn causes the proteolytic destruction of cyclins and proteins that hold the sister chromatids together.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kinetochore</span> Protein complex that allows microtubules to attach to chromosomes during cell division

A kinetochore is a disc-shaped protein structure associated with duplicated chromatids in eukaryotic cells where the spindle fibers attach during cell division to pull sister chromatids apart. The kinetochore assembles on the centromere and links the chromosome to microtubule polymers from the mitotic spindle during mitosis and meiosis. The term kinetochore was first used in a footnote in a 1934 Cytology book by Lester W. Sharp and commonly accepted in 1936. Sharp's footnote reads: "The convenient term kinetochore has been suggested to the author by J. A. Moore", likely referring to John Alexander Moore who had joined Columbia University as a freshman in 1932.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Aurora kinase B</span> Protein

Aurora kinase B is a protein that functions in the attachment of the mitotic spindle to the centromere and in cytokinesis.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">CENPA</span> Protein-coding gene in the species Homo sapiens

Centromere protein A, also known as CENPA, is a protein which in humans is encoded by the CENPA gene. CENPA is a histone H3 variant which is the critical factor determining the kinetochore position(s) on each chromosome in most eukaryotes including humans.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">NDC80</span> Protein-coding gene in the species Homo sapiens

Kinetochore protein NDC80 homolog is a protein that in humans is encoded by the NDC80 gene.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Centromere protein E</span> Centromere- and microtubule-associated protein

Centromere-associated protein E is a protein that in humans is encoded by the CENPE gene.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">CENPC1</span> Protein-coding gene in the species Homo sapiens

Centromere protein C 1 is a protein that in humans is encoded by the CENPC1 gene.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">CENPH</span> Protein-coding gene in the species Homo sapiens

Centromere protein H is a protein that in humans is encoded by the CENPH gene. It is involved in the assembly of kinetochore proteins, mitotic progression and chromosome segregation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Adrian Bird</span> British geneticist and professor

Sir Adrian Peter Bird is a British geneticist and Buchanan Professor of Genetics at the University of Edinburgh. Bird has spent much of his academic career in Edinburgh, from receiving his PhD in 1970 to working at the MRC Mammalian Genome Unit and later serving as director of the Wellcome Trust Centre for Cell Biology. His research focuses on understanding DNA methylation and CpG islands, and their role in diseases such as Rett syndrome.

Ulrich K. Laemmli, real name Lämmli, is a Professor in the biochemistry and molecular biology departments at University of Geneva. He is known for the refinement of SDS-PAGE, a widely used method for separating proteins based on their electrophoretic mobility. His paper describing the method is among the most cited scholarly journal articles of all time. His current research involves studying the structural organization of nuclei and chromatin within the cell.

In molecular biology, the protein domain named the Shugoshin N-terminal coiled-coil region is a domain found on the N-terminal region of the Shugoshin protein in eukaryotes. It has a role in attaching to the kinetochores, structures on the chromatids where microtubules attach. Shugoshin has a conserved coiled-coil N-terminal domain and a highly conserved C-terminal region. Shugoshin is a crucial target of Bub1 kinase that plays a central role in the cohesion of chromosomes during cell division.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Stephen D. M. Brown</span>

Steve David Macleod Brown is a British geneticist who is director of the Medical Research Council (MRC) Mammalian Genetics Unit, MRC Harwell at Harwell Science and Innovation Campus, Oxfordshire, a research centre on mouse genetics. In addition, he leads the Genetics and Pathobiology of Deafness research group.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wendy Bickmore</span> British genome biologist (born 1961)

Wendy Anne Bickmore is a British genome biologist known for her research on the organisation of genomic material in cells.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Neocentromere</span>

Neocentromeres are new centromeres that form at a place on the chromosome that is usually not centromeric. They typically arise due to disruption of the normal centromere. These neocentromeres should not be confused with “knobs”, which were also described as “neocentromeres” in maize in the 1950s. Unlike most normal centromeres, neocentromeres do not contain satellite sequences that are highly repetitive but instead consist of unique sequences. Despite this, most neocentromeres are still able to carry out the functions of normal centromeres in regulating chromosome segregation and inheritance. This raises many questions on what is necessary versus what is sufficient for constituting a centromere.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Robin Allshire</span> British academic

Robin Campbell Allshire is a British academic who is Professor of Chromosome Biology at University of Edinburgh and a Wellcome Trust Principal Research Fellow. His research group at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Cell Biology focuses on the epigenetic mechanisms governing the assembly of specialised domains of chromatin and their transmission through cell division.

Julian Blow is a molecular biologist, Professor of Chromosome Maintenance, and also the Dean of the School of Life Sciences, University of Dundee, Scotland.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tim J. Yen</span> American molecular biologist

Tim J. Yen is an American molecular biologist and cancer biologist. Yen held the rank of Professor and in 2023, became Emeritus at Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Yen is known for pioneering work in the field of mitosis.

In biology, the chromosome scaffold is the backbone that supports the structure of the chromosomes. It is composed of a group of non-histone proteins that are essential in the structure and maintenance of eukaryotic chromosomes throughout the cell cycle. These scaffold proteins are responsible for the condensation of chromatin during mitosis.

References

  1. 1 2 "The EMBO Pocket Directory" (PDF). European Molecular Biology Organization. Archived from the original (PDF) on 16 March 2015.
  2. ↑ Bill Earnshaw publications indexed by the Scopus bibliographic database. (subscription required)
  3. ↑ Bill Earnshaw publications from Europe PubMed Central
  4. ↑ "Prof Bill Earnshaw, FRSE, FMedSci: Professor of Chromosome Dynamics, School of Biological Sciences". University of Edinburgh. Archived from the original on 10 June 2015.
  5. ↑ Lazebnik, Y. A.; Kaufmann, S. H.; Desnoyers, S; Poirier, G. G.; Earnshaw, W. C. (1994). "Cleavage of poly(ADP-ribose) polymerase by a proteinase with properties like ICE". Nature. 371 (6495): 346–7. Bibcode:1994Natur.371..346L. doi:10.1038/371346a0. PMID   8090205. S2CID   4315478.
  6. ↑ Earnshaw, W. C.; Martins, L. M.; Kaufmann, S. H. (1999). "Mammalian caspases: Structure, activation, substrates, and functions during apoptosis". Annual Review of Biochemistry. 68: 383–424. doi:10.1146/annurev.biochem.68.1.383. PMID   10872455.
  7. ↑ Kaufmann, S. H.; Earnshaw, W. C. (2000). "Induction of apoptosis by cancer chemotherapy". Experimental Cell Research. 256 (1): 42–9. doi:10.1006/excr.2000.4838. PMID   10739650.
  8. 1 2 "Prof Bill Earnshaw, FRSE, FMedSci". University of Edinburgh. Archived from the original on 16 May 2012.
  9. ↑ Bill Earnshaw – Biological Sciences on Vimeo, University of Edinburgh
  10. ↑ Earnshaw, William Charles (1977). The Structure of Bacteriophage p22 and its Assembly Intermediates (PhD thesis). Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
  11. ↑ Earnshaw, W; King, J (1978). "Structure of phage P22 coat protein aggregates formed in the absence of the scaffolding protein". Journal of Molecular Biology. 126 (4): 721–47. doi:10.1016/0022-2836(78)90017-7. PMID   370407.
  12. ↑ Earnshaw, W. C.; Hendrix, R. W.; King, J (1979). "Structural studies of bacteriophage lambda heads and proheads by small angle X-ray diffraction". Journal of Molecular Biology. 134 (3): 575–94. doi:10.1016/0022-2836(79)90368-1. PMID   161330.
  13. ↑ Earnshaw, W. C.; King, J; Harrison, S. C.; Eiserling, F. A. (1978). "The structural organization of DNA packaged within the heads of T4 wild-type, isometric and giant bacteriophages". Cell. 14 (3): 559–68. doi:10.1016/0092-8674(78)90242-8. PMID   688382. S2CID   9738540.
  14. ↑ Earnshaw, W. C.; King, J; Eiserling, F. A. (1978). "The size of the bacteriophage T4 head in solution with comments about the dimension of virus particles as visualized by electron microscopy". Journal of Molecular Biology. 122 (2): 247–53. doi:10.1016/0022-2836(78)90040-2. PMID   682194.
  15. ↑ Earnshaw, W. C.; Honda, B. M.; Laskey, R. A.; Thomas, J. O. (1980). "Assembly of nucleosomes: The reaction involving X. Laevis nucleoplasmin". Cell. 21 (2): 373–83. doi:10.1016/0092-8674(80)90474-2. PMID   7407918. S2CID   25210558.
  16. ↑ Laskey, R. A.; Earnshaw, W. C. (1980). "Nucleosome assembly". Nature. 286 (5775): 763–7. Bibcode:1980Natur.286..763L. doi:10.1038/286763a0. PMID   6250082. S2CID   4373003.
  17. ↑ Earnshaw, W. C.; Laemmli, U. K. (1984). "Silver staining the chromosome scaffold". Chromosoma. 89 (3): 186–92. doi:10.1007/bf00294997. PMID   6201324. S2CID   19757611.
  18. ↑ Earnshaw, W. C.; Laemmli, U. K. (1983). "Architecture of metaphase chromosomes and chromosome scaffolds". The Journal of Cell Biology. 96 (1): 84–93. doi:10.1083/jcb.96.1.84. PMC   2112267 . PMID   6826654.
  19. ↑ Earnshaw, W. C.; Sullivan, K. F.; Machlin, P. S.; Cooke, C. A.; Kaiser, D. A.; Pollard, T. D.; Rothfield, N. F.; Cleveland, D. W. (1987). "Molecular cloning of cDNA for CENP-B, the major human centromere autoantigen". The Journal of Cell Biology. 104 (4): 817–29. doi:10.1083/jcb.104.4.817. PMC   2114438 . PMID   2435739.
  20. ↑ Bergmann, Jan H. (2010). Hacking the centromere chromatin code : dissecting the epigenetic regulation of centromere identity (PhD thesis). University of Edinburgh. hdl:1842/4670. EThOS   uk.bl.ethos.563000. Lock-green.svg
  21. ↑ Petruti-Mot, Anca (2000). Genetic and functional analysis of topoisomerase II in vertebrates (PhD thesis). University of Edinburgh. hdl:1842/8985. EThOS   uk.bl.ethos.615334. Lock-green.svg
  22. ↑ Ribeiro, Susana Abreu (2010). Structural and functional mapping of the vertebrate centromere (PhD thesis). University of Edinburgh.
  23. ↑ Wood, Laura Charlotte (2014). Understanding kinetochore dependency pathways using vertebrate conditional knockout cell lines and quantitative proteomics. ed.ac.uk (PhD thesis). University of Edinburgh. hdl:1842/8964. EThOS   uk.bl.ethos.615458. Lock-green.svg
  24. ↑ Xu, Zhenjie (2009). Cellular and molecular analysis of chromosomal passenger complex in vertebrate cells (PhD thesis). University of Edinburgh.
  25. ↑ Zuleger, Nikolaj (2012). Inner nuclear membrane proteins : targeting and influence on genome organization (PhD thesis). University of Edinburgh.
  26. ↑ "Professor William Earnshaw FMedSci FRS". London: Royal Society. Archived from the original on 23 September 2015.
  27. ↑ "Professor William Earnshaw FMedSci FRS". London: The Royal Society. Archived from the original on 10 June 2015.
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