John Brookfield | |
|---|---|
 John Brookfield (2012) | |
| Born | 30 May 1955 Liverpool, United Kingdom |
| Citizenship | British |
| Alma mater | University of Oxford University of London |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Population Genetics |
| Institutions | University of Nottingham University of Leicester |
| Thesis | (1980) |
| Website | www |
John Brookfield, (born 30 May 1955), is a British population geneticist. He is Professor of Evolutionary Genetics at the University of Nottingham, [1] in the School of Biology.
Brookfield is interested in how the genome evolves and has recently focussed on the evolution of DNA sequences which control development, particularly in Drosophila, and on the evolution of transposable elements.
Brookfield received his BA in Zoology from the University of Oxford 1976. He received his Ph.D. in Population Genetics at the University of London in 1980. Following a post as Research Demonstrator in Genetics at the University College of Swansea from 1979 to 1981, he became a visiting fellow in the Laboratory of Genetics at The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, North Carolina from 1981 to 1983. Returning to the UK, he became a lecturer in genetics at the University of Leicester from 1983 to 1986. He is now Professor of evolutionary genetics at the University of Nottingham. [1]
Brookfield is an invited Fellow of the Society of Biology [2] was appointed Fellow of the Institute of Biology in 2009, and has served as vice-president (External Relations) of the Genetics Society. [3] He served on the UK RAE panel for the assessment of Biological Sciences in both 2001 and 2008.
In 2006, Brookfield was invited to comment on the Chicken or the egg controversy, along with a number of others. All parties came down on the egg first side of the debate. Brookfield gives his reasoning as "The first chicken must have differed from its parents by some genetic change, perhaps a very subtle one, but one which caused this bird to be the first ever to fulfil our criteria for truly being a chicken. Thus the living organism inside the eggshell would have had the same DNA as the chicken that it would develop into, and thus would itself be a member of the species of chicken." [4]
To further public understanding of evolutionary genetics, Brookfield has created a podcast explaining some of the issues, [5] and as part of the Nottingham University 200 years of Darwin Celebrations, delivered Darwin's famous lecture On the Origin of the Species, in full Victorian dress. [6] He has additionally written in the media about DNA profiling. [7]
 | This article includes a list of general references, but it lacks sufficient corresponding inline citations .(August 2008) |
Carr, M., Soloway, J.R., Robinson, T.E., and Brookfield, J.F.Y. (2001) An investigation of the cause of low variability on the fourth chromosome of Drosophila melanogaster. Molecular Biology and Evolution 18, 2260–2269.
Brookfield, J.F.Y. (2001) Genome evolution. Pp. 351–372 in: Handbook of Statistical Genetics. Eds. M. Bishop, D. Balding & C. Cannings John Wiley Chichester.
Johnson, L.J. and Brookfield, J.F.Y. (2002) Evolutionary dynamics of a selfishly spreading gene that stimulates sexual reproduction in a partially sexual population. J. Evolutionary Biology 15, 42–48.
Carr, M., Soloway, J.R., Robinson, T.E. and Brookfield, J.F.Y. (2002) Mechanisms regulating the copy numbers of six LTR retrotransposons in the genome of Drosophila melanogaster. Chromosoma 110, 511–518.
Edwards, R.J., Sockett, R.E., and Brookfield, J.F.Y. (2002) A simple method for genome-wide screening for advantageous insertions of mobile DNAs in Escherichia coli. Current Biology 12, 863–867.
Edwards, R. J. and Brookfield, J.F.Y. (2003) Transiently beneficial insertions could maintain mobile DNA sequences in variable environments. Molecular Biology and Evolution 20, 30–37.
Johnson, L.J. and Brookfield, J.F.Y. (2003) Evolution of spatial expression pattern. Evolution and Development 5, 593–599.
Phinchongsakuldit, J., MacArthur, S., and Brookfield, J.F.Y. (2004) Evolution of developmental genes: Molecular microevolution of enhancer sequences at the Ubx locus in Drosophila and its impact on developmental phenotypes. Molecular Biology and Evolution 21, 348–363.
Drosophila is a genus of flies, belonging to the family Drosophilidae, whose members are often called "small fruit flies" or pomace flies, vinegar flies, or wine flies, a reference to the characteristic of many species to linger around overripe or rotting fruit. They should not be confused with the Tephritidae, a related family, which are also called fruit flies ; tephritids feed primarily on unripe or ripe fruit, with many species being regarded as destructive agricultural pests, especially the Mediterranean fruit fly.
A transposable element is a nucleic acid sequence in DNA that can change its position within a genome, sometimes creating or reversing mutations and altering the cell's genetic identity and genome size. Transposition often results in duplication of the same genetic material. In the human genome, L1 and Alu elements are two examples. Barbara McClintock's discovery of them earned her a Nobel Prize in 1983. Its importance in personalized medicine is becoming increasingly relevant, as well as gaining more attention in data analytics given the difficulty of analysis in very high dimensional spaces.
Selfish genetic elements are genetic segments that can enhance their own transmission at the expense of other genes in the genome, even if this has no positive or a net negative effect on organismal fitness. Genomes have traditionally been viewed as cohesive units, with genes acting together to improve the fitness of the organism. However, when genes have some control over their own transmission, the rules can change, and so just like all social groups, genomes are vulnerable to selfish behaviour by their parts.
Molecular evolution is the process of change in the sequence composition of cellular molecules such as DNA, RNA, and proteins across generations. The field of molecular evolution uses principles of evolutionary biology and population genetics to explain patterns in these changes. Major topics in molecular evolution concern the rates and impacts of single nucleotide changes, neutral evolution vs. natural selection, origins of new genes, the genetic nature of complex traits, the genetic basis of speciation, the evolution of development, and ways that evolutionary forces influence genomic and phenotypic changes.
Richard Charles Lewontin was an American evolutionary biologist, mathematician, geneticist, and social commentator. A leader in developing the mathematical basis of population genetics and evolutionary theory, he applied techniques from molecular biology, such as gel electrophoresis, to questions of genetic variation and evolution.
Experimental evolution is the use of laboratory experiments or controlled field manipulations to explore evolutionary dynamics. Evolution may be observed in the laboratory as individuals/populations adapt to new environmental conditions by natural selection.
Michael Ashburner was an English biologist and Professor in the Department of Genetics at University of Cambridge. He was also the former joint-head and co-founder of the European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI) of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) and a Fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge.
Brian Charlesworth is a British evolutionary biologist at the University of Edinburgh, and editor of Biology Letters. Since 1997, he has been Royal Society Research Professor at the Institute of Evolutionary Biology (IEB) in Edinburgh. He has been married since 1967 to the British evolutionary biologist Deborah Charlesworth.
Gabriel A. Dover was a British geneticist, best known for coining the term molecular drive in 1982 to describe a putative third evolutionary force operating distinctly from natural selection and genetic drift.
The history of molecular evolution starts in the early 20th century with "comparative biochemistry", but the field of molecular evolution came into its own in the 1960s and 1970s, following the rise of molecular biology. The advent of protein sequencing allowed molecular biologists to create phylogenies based on sequence comparison, and to use the differences between homologous sequences as a molecular clock to estimate the time since the last common ancestor. In the late 1960s, the neutral theory of molecular evolution provided a theoretical basis for the molecular clock, though both the clock and the neutral theory were controversial, since most evolutionary biologists held strongly to panselectionism, with natural selection as the only important cause of evolutionary change. After the 1970s, nucleic acid sequencing allowed molecular evolution to reach beyond proteins to highly conserved ribosomal RNA sequences, the foundation of a reconceptualization of the early history of life.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to genetics:
Gerald Mayer Rubin is an American biologist, notable for pioneering the use of transposable P elements in genetics, and for leading the public project to sequence the Drosophila melanogaster genome. Related to his genomics work, Rubin's lab is notable for development of genetic and genomics tools and studies of signal transduction and gene regulation. Rubin also serves as a vice president of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and executive director of the Janelia Research Campus.
Martin Edward Kreitman is an American geneticist at the University of Chicago, most well known for the McDonald–Kreitman test that is used to infer the amount of adaptive evolution in population genetic studies.
Peter D. Keightley FRS is Professor of Evolutionary Genetics at the Institute of Evolutionary Biology in School of Biological Sciences at the University of Edinburgh.
Margaret Gale Kidwell is a British American evolutionary biologist and Regents’ Professor Emerita at the University of Arizona, Tucson. She grew up on a farm in the English Midlands during World War II. After graduating from the University of Nottingham in 1953, she worked in the British Civil Service as an Agricultural Advisory Officer from 1955-1960. She moved to the US in 1960 under the auspices of a Kellogg Foundation Fellowship to study Genetics and Statistics at Iowa State University. She married quantitative geneticist James F. Kidwell in 1961, obtained her MS degree in 1962 and moved with her husband to Brown University in 1963. She received her PhD from Brown University in 1973 under the guidance of Masatoshi Nei. From 1973 to 1984 she pursued independent research into a number of anomalous genetic phenomena in Drosophila which later lead to collaborative studies resulting in the discovery of hybrid dysgenesis and the isolation of transposable P elements. After appointment as Professor of Biology at Brown University in 1984 she moved to the University of Arizona in 1985 as Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. Additional positions included Chair of the Interdisciplinary Genetics Program from 1988-1991 and Head of the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology from 1992-1997. Research at the University of Arizona has increasingly focused on the evolutionary significance of transposable genetic elements. In 1996, she was the first woman from Arizona to be elected to the United States National Academy of Sciences
Sigmavirus is a genus of viruses in the family Rhabdoviridae, order Mononegavirales. Sigmaviruses naturally infect dipterans.
Abraham Bentsionovich Korol is a professor in the Institute of Evolution at the University of Haifa. He is a prominent Israeli geneticist and evolutionary biologist known for his work on the evolution of sex and recombination, genome mapping and the genetics of complex traits. Korol was born in Bendery city, Moldavia, then part of the Soviet Union, and immigrated to Israel in 1991. Before immigrating to Israel, Korol was appointed in 1981 as a senior researcher and was awarded the degree of Doctor of Science by the Presidium of Academy of Science USSR in 1988, and became a full professor in 1991. After immigrating to Israel in 1991, Korol has established and headed the Laboratory of Population Genetics and Computational Biology in the Institute of Evolution at the University of Haifa. He became full professor there in 1996 and served as the director of the Institute of Evolution between 2008–2013. Since 1994, Korol has filled many scholarly positions including member of the steering committee of Israeli Gene Bank; member of the Human Genome Organization; member of the European Society of Evolutionary Biology; a member of the Coordinating Committee of the International Wheat Genome Sequencing Consortium; member of the Infrastructure Steering Committee of the Israeli Ministry of Science; representative of Haifa University in the Kamea program steering committee ; member of the Advisory Committee of Absorption in Science of the Israeli Ministry of Absorption.
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