John Diffley | |
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Born | John Francis Xavier Diffley 4 March 1958 |
Alma mater | New York University (BA, MSc, PhD) |
Awards |
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Scientific career | |
Fields | Chromatin replication, cell cycle, DNA damage checkpoints |
Institutions |
John Francis Xavier Diffley FRS FMedSci (born 4 March 1958) is an American biochemist and Associate Research Director at the Francis Crick Institute. [1] He is known for his contributions to the understanding of how DNA replication is initiated, and how it is subsequently regulated throughout the cell cycle and in response to DNA damage. [2]
Diffley was educated at New York University, obtaining his Ph.D. in 1985. He then worked as a postdoctoral researcher with Bruce Stillman at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. In 1990, he established his own research group at the Clare Hall Laboratories, Cancer Research UK, which is now part of the Francis Crick Institute. His group studies the mechanism and regulation of eukaryotic DNA replication.
In 1998, Diffley was elected a member of European Molecular Biology Organisation (EMBO). He is also an elected member of Academia Europaea (2009) and the European Academy of Cancer Sciences (2011). He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) [3] in 2005, Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in 2007, and Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences (FMedSci) in 2011.
He is a recipient of the Paul Marks Prize for Cancer Research (2003), the Louis-Jeantet Prize for Medicine(2016) [4] and the Canada Gairdner International Award (2019). [5] He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2020.
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Kim Ashley Nasmyth is an English geneticist, the Whitley Professor of Biochemistry at the University of Oxford, a Fellow of Trinity College, Oxford, former scientific director of the Research Institute of Molecular Pathology (IMP), and former head of the Department of Biochemistry, University of Oxford. He is best known for his work on the segregation of chromosomes during cell division.
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Richard Henderson is a British molecular biologist and biophysicist and pioneer in the field of electron microscopy of biological molecules. Henderson shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2017 with Jacques Dubochet and Joachim Frank.
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Stephen Craig West FRS is a British biochemist and molecular biologist specialising in research on DNA recombination and repair. He is known for pioneering studies on genome instability diseases including cancer. West obtained his BSc in 1974, and his PhD in 1977, both from Newcastle University. He is currently a Principal Group Leader at the Francis Crick Institute in London. He is an honorary Professor at University College London, and at Imperial College London. In recognition of his work he was awarded the Louis-Jeantet Prize for Medicine in 2007, is a fellow of the Royal Society, the Academy of Medical Sciences, an International Member of the National Academy of Sciences, and an International Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He received the 2022 Royal Medal for 'discovering and determining the functions of key enzymes that are essential for DNA recombination, repair and the maintenance of genomes'.
Bruce William Stillman, AO, FAA, FRS is a biochemist and cancer researcher who has served as the Director of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) since 1994 and President since 2003. He also served as the Director of its NCI-designated Cancer Center for 25 years from 1992 to 2016. During his leadership, CSHL has been ranked as the No. 1 institution in molecular biology and genetics research by Thomson Reuters. Stillman's research focuses on how chromosomes are duplicated in human cells and in yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae; the mechanisms that ensure accurate inheritance of genetic material from one generation to the next; and how missteps in this process lead to cancer. For his accomplishments, Stillman has received numerous awards, including the Alfred P. Sloan, Jr. Prize in 2004 and the 2010 Louisa Gross Horwitz Prize, both of which he shared with Thomas J. Kelly of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, as well as the 2019 Canada Gairdner International Award for biomedical research, which he shared with John Diffley.
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