Paul Sharp | |
---|---|
Born | Paul Martin Sharp 12 September 1957 [1] |
Alma mater | University of Edinburgh (BSc, PhD) |
Known for | |
Awards | EMBO Member (1992) [5] |
Scientific career | |
Fields | |
Institutions | |
Thesis | Quantitative genetics of Drosophila melanogaster - variation in male mating ability (1982) |
Doctoral advisor | Alan Robertson [8] |
Doctoral students | Kenneth H. Wolfe [9] [10] |
Other notable students | Desmond G. Higgins (postdoc) [11] |
Website | www |
Paul Martin Sharp (born 1957) [1] is a British bioinformatician who is a professor of genetics at the University of Edinburgh, where he holds the Alan Robertson chair of genetics in the Institute of Evolutionary Biology. [12] [13] [14] [15]
Sharp was educated at the University of Edinburgh where he was awarded a Bachelor of Science degree in 1979 [1] [16] followed by a PhD in 1982 for research using quantitative genetics on the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster supervised by Alan Robertson. [12] [8]
Sharp has held academic posts at Trinity College, Dublin from 1982 to 1993, [7] the University of Nottingham from 1993 to 2007 [7] and was appointed Professor at the University of Edinburgh in 2007. [7]
Sharp's research investigates the evolutionary origin of bacteria and viruses. [17] [18] [19] He has carried out important work into the origin of HIV and its transmission from chimpanzees to humans. He also discovered that the human malaria parasite, Plasmodium , originated in gorillas. [17] He was one of the first researchers to use DNA sequence databases to gain insight into evolutionary processes. His work amplifying DNA from chimpanzee faecal samples showed that HIV type 1 was transmitted to humans from a specific chimp population in West Africa in the early 20th century. Paul went on to examine his collection of ape faecal samples for plasmodium parasites, finding a likely candidate for the form that causes malaria in humans. [17] [20]
In the eighties, Sharp collaborated with Desmond G. Higgins during the creation of CLUSTAL, [2] [3] a suite of multiple sequence alignment programs that have become widely used and highly influential. [21] His research has been funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC). [22] His former doctoral students include Kenneth H. Wolfe.
Sharp was elected member of the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) in 1992, [5] and was President of the Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution [ when? ]. He was elected member of the Royal Irish Academy in 1993, [16] a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (FRSE) in 2010 [23] and a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 2013. [17]
Sharps's entry in Who's Who lists his recreations as hill walking, pteridology and, since 1967, supporting Nottingham Forest Football Club. [1]
Simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV) is a species of retrovirus that cause persistent infections in at least 45 species of non-human primates. Based on analysis of strains found in four species of monkeys from Bioko Island, which was isolated from the mainland by rising sea levels about 11,000 years ago, it has been concluded that SIV has been present in monkeys and apes for at least 32,000 years, and probably much longer.
Conrad Hal Waddington was a British developmental biologist, paleontologist, geneticist, embryologist and philosopher who laid the foundations for systems biology, epigenetics, and evolutionary developmental biology.
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.
Deborah Charlesworth is a population geneticist from the UK, notable for her important discoveries in population genetics and evolutionary biology. Her most notable research is in understanding the evolution of recombination, sex chromosomes and mating system for plants.
Sir Edwin Mellor Southern is an English Lasker Award-winning molecular biologist, Emeritus Professor of Biochemistry at the University of Oxford and a fellow of Trinity College, Oxford. He is most widely known for the invention of the Southern blot, published in 1975 and now a common laboratory procedure.
Nicholas Hamilton Barton is a British evolutionary biologist.
Noreen Elizabeth, Lady Murray was an English molecular geneticist who helped pioneer recombinant DNA technology by creating a series of bacteriophage lambda vectors into which genes could be inserted and expressed in order to examine their function. During her career she was recognised internationally as a pioneer and one of Britain's most distinguished and highly respected molecular geneticists. Until her 2001 retirement she held a personal chair in molecular genetics at the University of Edinburgh. She was president of the Genetical Society, vice president of the Royal Society, and a member of the UK Science and Technology Honours Committee.
David Moore Glover is a British geneticist and Research Professor of Biology and Biological Engineering at the California Institute of Technology. He served as Balfour Professor of Genetics at the University of Cambridge, a Wellcome Trust investigator in the Department of Genetics at the University of Cambridge, and Fellow of Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge. He serves as the first editor-in-chief of the open-access journal Open Biology published by the Royal Society.
Alan Robertson was an English population geneticist. Originally a chemist, he was recruited after the Second World War to work on animal genetics on behalf of the British government, and continued in this sphere until his retirement in 1985. He was a major influence in the widespread adoption of artificial insemination of cattle.
William George Hill was an English geneticist and statistician. He was a professor at University of Edinburgh. He is credited as co-discoverer of the Hill–Robertson effect with his doctoral advisor, Alan Robertson.
Veronica van Heyningen is an English geneticist who specialises in the etiology of anophthalmia as an honorary professor at University College London (UCL). She previously served as head of medical genetics at the MRC Human Genetics Unit in Edinburgh and the president of The Genetics Society. In 2014 she became president of the Galton Institute. As of 2019 she chairs the diversity committee of the Royal Society, previously chaired by Uta Frith.
John Murdoch Mitchison was a British zoologist.
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.
Allan Balmain is an American academic who is Barbara Bass Bakar Distinguished Professor of Cancer Genetics at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF).
Desmond Gerard Higgins is a Professor of Bioinformatics at University College Dublin, widely known for CLUSTAL, a series of computer programs for performing multiple sequence alignment. According to Nature, Higgins' papers describing CLUSTAL are among the top ten most highly cited scientific papers of all time.
Wendy Anne Bickmore is a British genome biologist known for her research on the organisation of genomic material in cells.
Paul Gordon Jarvis was a leading ecologist and Professor of Forestry and Natural Resources at the University of Edinburgh from 1975 to 2001.
Beatrice H. Hahn is an American virologist and biomedical researcher best known for work which established that HIV, the virus causing AIDS, began as a virus passed from apes to humans. She is a professor of Medicine and Microbiology in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. In November 2002, Discover magazine listed Hahn as one of the 50 most important women scientists.
Kenneth Henry Wolfe is an Irish geneticist and professor of genomic evolution at University College Dublin (UCD), Ireland.
Adam C. Eyre-Walker, is a British evolutionary geneticist, currently Professor of Biology in the School of Life Sciences at the University of Sussex. He is noted for making "significant contributions to our understanding of evolution at the molecular level" and pioneering the use of DNA sequence databases for extracting information about the evolution of genomes.
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