Paul M. Sharp

Last updated

Paul Sharp

FRS FRSE MRIA
Born
Paul Martin Sharp

(1957-09-12) 12 September 1957 (age 66) [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.research.ed.ac.uk/portal/en/persons/paul-sharp(ed91461c-d4f2-497d-8621-2ec9be212726).html

Paul Martin Sharp (born 1957) [1] FRS FRSE MRIA [12] [13] is Professor of Genetics at the University of Edinburgh, where he holds the Alan Robertson chair of genetics in the Institute of Evolutionary Biology. [14] [15] [16] [17]

Contents

Education

Sharp was educated at the University of Edinburgh where he was awarded a Bachelor of Science degree in 1979 [1] [18] followed by a PhD in 1982 for research using quantitative genetics on the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster supervised by Alan Robertson. [14] [8]

Career and research

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. [12] [19] [20] 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. [12] 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. [12] [21]

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. [22] His research has been funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC). [23] His former doctoral students include Kenneth H. Wolfe.

Awards and honours

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, [18] a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (FRSE) in 2010 [13] and a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 2013. [12]

Personal life

Sharps's entry in Who's Who lists his recreations as hill walking, pteridology and, since 1967, supporting Nottingham Forest Football Club. [1]

Related Research Articles

<i>Simian immunodeficiency virus</i> Species of retrovirus

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">C. H. Waddington</span> British biologist

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Brian Charlesworth</span> British evolutionary biologist

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Edwin Southern</span> English molecular biologist

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Charlotte Auerbach</span> Geneticist, author

Charlotte "Lotte" Auerbach FRS FRSE was a German geneticist who contributed to founding the science of mutagenesis. She became well known after 1942 when she discovered with A. J. Clark and J. M. Robson that mustard gas could cause mutations in fruit flies. She wrote 91 scientific papers, and was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and of the Royal Society of London.

John Robert Stanley Fincham FRS FRSE was a noted British geneticist who made important contributions to biochemical genetics and microbial genetics.

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alan Robertson (geneticist)</span>

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.

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

The Honourable John Murdoch Mitchison FRS, FRSE was a British zoologist.

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

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.

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

Allan Balmain FRS FRSE is Barbara Bass Bakar Distinguished Professor of Cancer Genetics at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Desmond G. Higgins</span>

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.

<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.

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Neil Gow (scientist)</span> British microbiologist (born 1957)

Neil Andrew Robert Gow is a professor of Microbiology and deputy Vice Chancellor at the University of Exeter. Previously he served at the University of Aberdeen for 38 years and retains an honorary Chair there.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kenneth H. Wolfe</span> Irish geneticist and academic

Kenneth Henry Wolfe is an Irish geneticist and professor of genomic evolution at University College Dublin (UCD), Ireland.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 Anon (2016). "Sharp, Prof. Paul Martin" . Who's Who (online Oxford University Press  ed.). Oxford: A & C Black. doi:10.1093/ww/9780199540884.013.271679.(Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  2. 1 2 Higgins, Desmond G.; Sharp, Paul M. (1988). "CLUSTAL: a package for performing multiple sequence alignment on a microcomputer". Gene. 73 (1): 237–244. doi:10.1016/0378-1119(88)90330-7. PMID   3243435.
  3. 1 2 Higgins, Desmond G.; Sharp, Paul M. (1989). "Fast and sensitive multiple sequence alignments on a microcomputer". Bioinformatics. 5 (2): 151–153. doi:10.1093/bioinformatics/5.2.151. PMID   2720464.
  4. 1 2 Sharp, Paul M.; Li, Wen-Hsiung (1987). "The codon adaptation index-a measure of directional synonymous codon usage bias, and its potential applications". Nucleic Acids Research. 15 (3): 1281–1295. doi:10.1093/nar/15.3.1281. PMC   340524 . PMID   3547335.
  5. 1 2 "Paul M. Sharp University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom". Hedelberg: EMBO. Archived from the original on 19 January 2016.
  6. ↑ Paul M. Sharp publications indexed by Google Scholar OOjs UI icon edit-ltr-progressive.svg
  7. 1 2 3 4 Paul Sharp's ORCID   0000-0001-9771-543X
  8. 1 2 Sharp, Paul Martin (1982). Quantitative genetics of Drosophila melanogaster : variation in male mating ability (PhD thesis). University of Edinburgh. hdl:1842/14397. OCLC   606022632. EThOS   uk.bl.ethos.330579. Open Access logo PLoS transparent.svg
  9. ↑ Paul M. Sharp at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
  10. ↑ Wolfe, Kenneth H. (1990). Rates of nucleotide substitution in higher plants and mammals (PhD thesis). Trinity College, Dublin. OCLC   842511087.
  11. ↑ "Paul M. Sharp: Computational Biology Tree". academictree.org.
  12. 1 2 3 4 5 Anon (2013). "Professor Paul Sharp FRS". London: Royal Society. Archived from the original on 17 November 2015. One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from the royalsociety.org website where:
    “All text published under the heading 'Biography' on Fellow profile pages is available under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.” -- "Royal Society Terms, conditions and policies". Archived from the original on 25 September 2015. Retrieved 9 March 2016.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
  13. 1 2 "Royal Society of Edinburgh Fellows as of 2016-05-13" (PDF). Edinburgh: Royal Society of Edinburgh. Archived from the original (PDF) on 30 March 2016.
  14. 1 2 "Professor Paul M. Sharp, FRS, FRSE, MRIA: Alan Robertson Chair of Genetics". Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh. Archived from the original on 12 April 2016.
  15. ↑ Sharp, P. M.; Hahn, B. H. (2011). "Origins of HIV and the AIDS Pandemic". Cold Spring Harbor Perspectives in Medicine. 1 (1): a006841. doi:10.1101/cshperspect.a006841. PMC   3234451 . PMID   22229120.
  16. ↑ "Staff profiles: Institute of Evolutionary Biology". Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh. Archived from the original on 17 September 2015.
  17. ↑ Paul M. Sharp publications from Europe PubMed Central
  18. 1 2 "Paul Martin Sharp BSc, PhD (Edin 1979, 1982). FRS, FRSE". Dublin: Royal Irish Academy. 19 October 2015. Archived from the original on 13 April 2016.
  19. ↑ Paul M. Sharp publications indexed by the Scopus bibliographic database. (subscription required)
  20. ↑ Hahn, Beatrice H.; Shaw, George M.; Cock, Kevin M. De; Sharp, Paul M. (2000). "AIDS as a Zoonosis: Scientific and Public Health Implications". Science . 287 (5453): 607–614. Bibcode:2000Sci...287..607H. doi:10.1126/science.287.5453.607. PMID   10649986.
  21. ↑ Gao, Feng; Bailes, Elizabeth; Robertson, David L.; Chen, Yalu; Rodenburg, Cynthia M.; Michael, Scott F.; Cummins, Larry B.; Arthur, Larry O.; Peeters, Martine; Shaw, George M.; Sharp, Paul M.; Hahn, Beatrice H. (1999). "Origin of HIV-1 in the chimpanzee Pan troglodytes troglodytes". Nature. 397 (6718): 436–441. Bibcode:1999Natur.397..436G. doi: 10.1038/17130 . PMID   9989410. S2CID   4432185.
  22. ↑ Van Noorden, R.; Maher, B.; Nuzzo, R. (2014). "The top 100 papers: Nature explores the most-cited research of all time". Nature . 514 (7524): 550–3. doi: 10.1038/514550a . PMID   25355343.
  23. ↑ "UK Government grants awarded to Paul M. Sharp". Swindon: Research Councils UK. Archived from the original on 12 April 2016.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.