Wendy Bickmore | |
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 Bickmore in 2017 | |
| Born | 28 July 1961 Shoreham-by-Sea, [1] England |
| Education | Chichester High School for Girls [1] |
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| Thesis | Molecular analysis of DNA sequences from the human Y chromosome |
| Doctoral advisor | Howard Cooke [3] |
| Website | ed |
Wendy Anne Bickmore CBE FRS FMedSci FRSE (born 28 July 1961) [1] is a British genome biologist known for her research on the organisation of genomic material in cells.
Bickmore was born at Shoreham-by-Sea on 28 July 1961 to Beryl and Keith Bickmore. [1] She was educated at Chichester High School for Girls [1] where her interest in science began being influenced by her biology teacher and her parents who were keen amateur gardeners. Her interest in biochemistry was confirmed having read ‘The Chemistry of Life’ by Steven Rose [4] and she went on to study biochemistry at St Hugh's College, Oxford [5] graduating with a BA. She then undertook a PhD at the University of Edinburgh analysing nucleic acid sequences from the Y chromosome of humans. [6] Her supervisors were Howard Cooke [3] and Adrian Bird. [7] She was an independent fellow at the Lister Institute of Preventive Medicine from 1991 until 1996. [8]
Her work has focused on how DNA, chromosomes and specific genes are organised and packaged in the cell nucleus, [9] how this process is regulated during development to facilitate the expression of genes, and how aberrant genome organisation is linked to disease. [10] [11] [12] [13]
In 2020, she was recognised for her research examining the likelihood that people will develop serious symptoms of the COVID-19 disease. [14]
Bickmore was president of The Genetics Society from 2015 until 2018. [15]
As of 2021, she is director of the MRC Human Genetics Unit at the University of Edinburgh. [16] [8]
She is a member of the editorial board for Genes & Development . [17]
Bickmore was awarded EMBO Membership in 2001, [2] elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (FRSE) in 2005 [1] and elected a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2005 (FMedSci). [18] She was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 2017. [19] She was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2021 New Year Honours for services to biomedical sciences and women in science. [20]
She is a member of the organisation Trees for Life which is working to restore the forest in the Highlands of Scotland. [21]
Heterochromatin is a tightly packed form of DNA or condensed DNA, which comes in multiple varieties. These varieties lie on a continuum between the two extremes of constitutive heterochromatin and facultative heterochromatin. Both play a role in the expression of genes. Because it is tightly packed, it was thought to be inaccessible to polymerases and therefore not transcribed; however, according to Volpe et al. (2002), and many other papers since, much of this DNA is in fact transcribed, but it is continuously turned over via RNA-induced transcriptional silencing (RITS). Recent studies with electron microscopy and OsO4 staining reveal that the dense packing is not due to the chromatin.
Sir John Edward Sulston was a British biologist and academic who won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his work on the cell lineage and genome of the worm Caenorhabditis elegans in 2002 with his colleagues Sydney Brenner and Robert Horvitz at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology. He was a leader in human genome research and Chair of the Institute for Science, Ethics and Innovation at the University of Manchester. Sulston was in favour of science in the public interest, such as free public access of scientific information and against the patenting of genes and the privatisation of genetic technologies.
Lorna Ann Casselton, was a British academic and biologist. She was Professor Emeritus of Fungal Genetics in the Department of Plant Science at the University of Oxford, and was known for her genetic and molecular analysis of the mushroom Coprinus cinereus and Coprinus lagopus.
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.
Karen Heather Vousden, CBE, FRS, FRSE, FMedSci is a British medical researcher. She is known for her work on the tumour suppressor protein, p53, and in particular her discovery of the important regulatory role of Mdm2, an attractive target for anti-cancer agents. From 2003 to 2016, she was the director of the Cancer Research UK Beatson Institute in Glasgow, UK, moving back to London in 2016 to take up the role of Chief Scientist at CRUK and Group Leader at the Francis Crick Institute.
Tripartite motif-containing protein 31 is a protein that in humans is encoded by the TRIM31 gene.
CD320 is a human gene.
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.
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.
The Centre for Gene Regulation and Expression, located within the School of Life Sciences, University of Dundee, is a research facility working in the field of gene expression and chromosome biology. Previously part of the Dundee Biocentre and receiving significant Wellcome Trust funding from 1995 onwards, it was awarded Wellcome Trust Centre status in 2008. Professor Tom Owen-Hughes is the centre's director.
Professor Nicholas Dixon Hastie CBE, FRS, FRSE is a British geneticist, and former Director of the MRC Human Genetics Unit at the University of Edinburgh.
Julie Ann Ahringer is an American/British Professor of Genetics and Genomics, Director of the Gurdon Institute and a member of the Department of Genetics at the University of Cambridge. She leads a research lab investigating the control of gene expression.
Dame Amanda Gay Fisher is a British cell biologist and Director of the Medical Research Council (MRC) London Institute of Medical Sciences at the Hammersmith Hospital campus of Imperial College London, where she is also a Professor leading the Institute of Clinical Sciences. She has made contributions to multiple areas of cell biology, including determining the function of several genes in HIV and describing the importance of a gene's location within the cell nucleus.
William Charles Earnshaw is Professor of Chromosome Dynamics at the University of Edinburgh, where he has been a Wellcome Trust Principal Research Fellow since 1996.
Paul Martin Sharp is Professor of Genetics at the University of Edinburgh, where he holds the Alan Robertson chair of genetics in the Institute of Evolutionary Biology.
Nuclear organization refers to the spatial distribution of chromatin within a cell nucleus. There are many different levels and scales of nuclear organisation. Chromatin is a higher order structure of DNA.
Robin Campbell Allshire 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.
Anne Carla Ferguson-Smith is a mammalian developmental geneticist. She is the Arthur Balfour Professor of Genetics and Pro-Vice Chancellor for Research and International Partnerships at the University of Cambridge. Formerly head of the Department of Genetics at the University of Cambridge, she is a Fellow of Darwin College, Cambridge and serves as President of the Genetics Society.
Neil Alexander Steven Brockdorff is a Wellcome Trust Principal Research Fellow and professor in the department of biochemistry at the University of Oxford. Brockdorff's research investigates gene and genome regulation in mammalian development. His interests are in the molecular basis of X-inactivation, the process that evolved in mammals to equalise X chromosome gene expression levels in XX females relative to XY males.
Ann Chester Chandley DSc, F.I.Biol., FRSE was an international cytogeneticist with the Medical Research Council unit which became the Human Genetics Unit at the University of Edinburgh. She became a Fellow of the Institute of Biology in recognition of her contribution and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.
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