John Sulston

Sir John Sulston
John Sulston portrait from the Public Library of Science (PLOS)
Born	John Edward Sulston (1942-03-27) 27 March 1942 Cambridge, England
Citizenship	Britain
Nationality	English
Fields	Chemistry Molecular biology
Institutions	Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute University of Cambridge Salk Institute Laboratory of Molecular Biology University of Manchester
Alma mater	University of Cambridge (BA, PhD)
Thesis	Aspects of oligoribonucleotide synthesis (1966)
Doctoral advisor	Colin Reese
Known for	Genome sequencing of Caenorhabditis elegans and humans Sulston score Apoptosis
Influences	Ian Fleming Leslie Orgel
Notable awards	FRS (1986) Beadle Award (2000) Knight Bachelor (2001) Nobel prize (2002) Gairdner Award (2002)
Spouse	Daphne Edith Bate (m. 1966)
Children	1 son, 1 daughter
Website www.manchester.ac.uk/research/john.sulston www.sanger.ac.uk/about/people/biographies/jsulston.html

Sir John Edward Sulston FRS (born 27 March 1942) is a British biologist. For his work on the cell lineage and genome of the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans, he was jointly awarded the 2002 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Sydney Brenner and Robert Horvitz. As of 2014 he is Chair of the Institute for Science, Ethics and Innovation at the University of Manchester.

Early life and education

Sulston was born in Cambridge to parents The Reverend Canon Arthur Edward Aubrey Sulston and Josephine Muriel Frearson (née Blocksidge). His father was an Anglican priest and administrator of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. An English teacher at Watford Grammar School, his mother quit her job to care for him and his sister Madeleine. His mother home-tutored them until he was five. At age five he entered the local preparatory school (York House School, Redheath) where he soon developed aversion to games. He instead developed an early interest in science, having fun with dissecting animals and sectioning plants to observe their structure and function. Sulston won a scholarship to Merchant Taylors' School, Northwood and then to Pembroke College, Cambridge graduating in 1963 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Natural Sciences (Chemistry). He joined the Department of Chemistry, University of Cambridge, after being interviewed by Alexander Todd and was awarded his PhD in 1966 for research in nucleotide chemistry.

Career

Between 1966 and 1969 he worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in US. His supervisor Colin Reese had arranged for him to work with Leslie Orgel, who would turn his scientific career in a different pathway. Orgel introduced him to Francis Crick and Sydney Brenner, who were working in Cambridge. He became inclined to biological research.

Although Orgel wanted Sulston to remain with him, Sydney Brenner persuaded Sulston returned to Cambridge to work on the neurobiology of Caenorhabditis elegans at the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology. Sulston soon produced the complete map of the worm's neurons. He continued work on its DNA and subsequently the whole genome sequencing. In collaboration with the Genome Institute at Washington University in St. Louis the whole genome sequence was published in 1998, so that C. elegans became the first animal to have its complete genome sequenced.

Sulston played a central role in both the C. elegans and human genome sequencing projects. He had argued successfully for the sequencing of C. elegans to show that large-scale genome sequencing projects were feasible. As sequencing of the worm genome proceeded, the project to sequence the human genome began. At this point he was made director of the newly established Sanger Centre (named after Fred Sanger), located in Cambridgeshire, England.

Following completion of the 'working draft' of the human genome sequence in 2000, Sulston retired from his role as director at the Sanger Centre. With Georgina Ferry, he narrates his research career leading to the human genome sequence in The Common Thread: A Story of Science, Politics, Ethics, and the Human Genome (2002).

Awards and honours

Sulston was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1986. His certificate of election reads:

John Sulston is distinguished for his work on the molecular and developmental genetics of Caenorhabditis elegans. His initial research was in the field of chemical synthesis of oligonucleotides. Sulston began his work on C. elegans in 1974 characterising its DNA. Since then he has carried out a wide range of genetical and developmental studies on the nematode but his major research has been on the developmental lineage and mutations that affect it. In a series of studies, culminating in a paper published in 1983, Sulston has analysed and described the total cell lineage of the nematode making it the first organism for which the origin of every cell is exactly known. This work is the basis for the study of mutations affecting lineages and is the foundation on which detailed studies of development in this organism will be based. Sulston has now turned his attention to an analysis of the genome of C. elegans and is constructing a total physical map using a novel method of analysing cloned DNA fragments.

In 2001 Sulston gave the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures on The Secrets of Life. In 2002 he won the Dan David Prize and the Robert Burns Humanitarian Award. Later, he shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Sydney Brenner and Robert Horvitz, both of whom he had collaborated with at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology (LMB), for their discoveries concerning 'genetic regulation of organ development and programmed cell death'. One of Sulston's most important contributions during his research years at the LMB was to elucidate the precise order in which cells in C. elegans divide. In fact, he and his team succeeded in tracing the nematode's entire embryonic cell lineage. Sulston is now a leading campaigner against the patenting of human genetic information.

In 2013, Sulston was awarded the Royal Society of New Zealand's Rutherford Memorial Lecture, which he gave on the subject of population pressure.

Personal life

The Sulston Laboratories of the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute are named in Sulstons honour

John Sulston met Daphne Bate, a fellow research student in Cambridge. They got married in 1966 just before they left for US for postdoctoral research. Together they have two children. The first child Ingrid was born in La Jolla in 1967, Adrian later in England.

Although brought up in a Christian family, Sulston lost his faith during his student life at Cambridge, and remains an atheist. He is a distinguished supporter of the British Humanist Association. In 2003 he was one of 22 Nobel Laureates who signed the Humanist Manifesto.

Sulston is in favour of free public access of scientific information. He wants genome information freely available, and he has described as "totally immoral and disgusting" the idea of profiteering from such research. He also wants to change patent law, and argues that restrictions on drugs such as the anti-viral drug Tamiflu by Roche are a hindrance to patients whose lives are dependent on them.

Sulston provided bail sureties for Julian Assange, according to Mark Stephens, Julian's solicitor. Having backed Julian Assange by pledging bail in December 2010, he lost the money in June 2012 when a judge ordered it to be forfeited, as Assange had sought to escape the jurisdiction of the English courts by entering the embassy of Ecuador.

External links

• John Sulston profile from Channel4
• John Sulston profile from BBC4
• Freeview Video of Fredrick Sanger in conversation with John Sulston by the Vega Science Trust
• John Sulston profile from the Medical Research Council lab for Molecular Biology
• John Sulston interviewed by Alan Macfarlane 16 September 2008 (film)
• Dan David Prize laureate 2002
• Sir John Sulston awarded the 2002 Nobel Prize (press release from the Sanger Centre)
• The public servant: John Sulston
• British Scientists share 2002 Nobel Prize
• John Sulston: One man and his worm from The Guardian

Non-profit organization positions
Preceded by -	Director of the Sanger Institute 1993–2000	Succeeded by Allan Bradley