David Baulcombe

David Baulcombe was born on 7 April 1952 in the United Kingdom, in Solihull, Warwickshire,^[4][8] (in England's Midlands), into "a non-scientific family".^[9]

He received his Bachelor of Science degree in botany from the University of Leeds in 1973,^[9] at the age of 21,^{[citation needed]} and continued his studies at the University of Edinburgh, receiving his Doctor of Philosophy degree in 1976/1977^[9][10] (for research on Messenger RNA in vascular plants supervised by John Ingle^{[citation needed]}).

After his PhD, Baulcombe spent the next three years as a postdoctoral fellow in North America,^{[citation needed]} in Montreal, Quebec, Canada and then in Athens, Georgia, in the United States^[9] (respectively, at McGill University from January 1977-November 1978, and then the University of Georgia thereafter, until December 1980^{[citation needed]}). Baulcombe returned to the United Kingdom then, where he was given the opportnity to create his own research group at the Plant Breeding Institute in Cambridge^[9] (PBI, the John Innes Centre^{[citation needed]}). At the PBI, Baulcombe initially held the position of Higher Scientific Officer, and was promoted to Principal Scientific Officer in April 1986.^{[6][self-published source?]}

In August 1988 Baulcombe left Cambridge for Norwich.^{[citation needed]} He joined the Sainsbury Laboratory in Norwich in 1988, and as of 2007 was a senior research scientist,^[9] and also served as head of laboratory between 1990 and 1993 and between 1999 and 2003.^{[citation needed]} In 1998 he was appointed honorary professor at the University of East Anglia, and given a full professorship there in 2002.^{[6][self-published source?]} In March 2007 it was announced that Baulcombe would become the next Professor of Botany at the University of Cambridge (as a Royal Society Research Professor^{[citation needed]}), taking up his post in September 2007.^[11] Accordingly, in 2008, Baulcombe was also named as a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge.^{[citation needed]} In 2009, the Cambridge professorship was renamed "Regius Professor of Botany".^[12] He was succeeded in the chair by Ottoline Leyser in 2020.^[13]

Baulcombe "serves on several [professional] committees and study sections",^{[8][third-party source needed]} and was president of the International Society of Plant Molecular Biology from 2003–2004.^{[citation needed]} In the approximate period of 2007-2009, Baulcombe was a Senior Advisor to The EMBO Journal.^[14] He also served on the Life Sciences jury for the Infosys Prize in 2015.^{[citation needed]}

An annotation regarding Baulcombe's 2001 nomination to The Royal Society read that he had

made an outstanding contribution to the inter-related areas of plant virology, gene silencing and disease resistance... discover[ing] a specific signalling system and an antiviral defence system in plants... [leading] to the development of new technologies that promise to revolutionise gene discovery in plant biology.^{[15][better source needed][verification needed]}

Hence, his research interests have mainly been in botany and fundamental biology, in the fields of virus movement, genetic regulation, disease resistance, and RNA and more generally, gene silencing.^{[according to whom?][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][third-party source needed]}

In 1998 Craig Mello, Andrew Fire, and colleagues reported a potent gene silencing effect—observations on the mechanism of RNA interference—after injecting double stranded RNA into Caenorhabditis elegans,^[28][29] a discovery notable as a detailed description of what proved to be the correct mechanism of a broad class of phenomena.^[28] Baulcombe then, with Andrew Hamilton, discovered a small interfering RNA that is the specificity determinant in RNA-mediated gene silencing in plants.^{[30][third-party source needed]} Baulcombe's group demonstrated "that while viruses can induce gene silencing some viruses encode proteins that suppress gene silencing".^{[8][third-party source needed]} After these initial observations, many laboratories around the world searched for the occurrence of this phenomenon in other organisms.^{[citation needed]} (The leaders of the team reporting the correct mechanism of the phenomena, Fire and Mello, were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2006 for their work,^[28] although some have argued that Baulcombe was among those overlooked for that year's prize.^[31])

With other members of his research group at the Sainsbury Laboratory, Baulcombe also helped unravel the importance of small interfering RNA in epigenetics and in defence against viruses.^{[citation needed]}

In June 2009, Baulcombe was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in the 2009 Birthday Honours List, "for services to plant science".^[32]

Baulcombe has also received the following honours and awards:

• 1997 election to EMBO Membership;^[33]
• 2001 election as Fellow of the Royal Society;^[1][11]
• 2002 election as Member of the Academia Europaea;^[34]
• 2002 recipient of the Ruth Allen Award of the American Phytopathological Society;^[8]
• 2002 recipient of the Kumho Science International Award in Plant Molecular Biology and Biotechnology, awarded by the Kumho Cultural Foundation, Korea;^{[citation needed]}
• 2003 co-recipient (with Thomas Tuschl, Craig Mello, an Andrew Fire), of the Wiley Prize in the Biomedical Sciences, awarded by the Wiley Foundation at Rockefeller University;^[35][11]
• 2004 recipient of the M. W. Beijerinck Virology Prize, awarded by the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences;^{[citation needed]}
• 2005 election as a Foreign Associate Member of the National Academy of Sciences;^[11]
• 2005 co-recipient (with Craig Mello and Andrew Fire) of the Massry Prize, awarded by the Massry Foundation and the University of Southern California;^[11]
• 2006 recipient of the Royal Medal of The Royal Society, "For his profoundly significant recent discoveries for not only plants but for all of biology and for medicine.";^[36]
• 2008 co-recipient (with Gary Ruvkun and Victor Ambros) of the Benjamin Franklin Medal, awarded by The Franklin Institute, "for their discovery of small RNAs that turn off genes";^[37][38]
• 2008 co-recipient (with Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun) of the Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research;^{[citation needed]}
• 2009 recipient of the Harvey Prize, granted by the Technion Israeli Institute for Technology;^{[citation needed]}
• 2010 recipient of the Wolf Prize in Agriculture;^{[citation needed]}
• 2010 Humphry Davy Award of the Royal Society, in its last year of issue, a part of the Humphry Davy and Claude Bernard Lectures, occasional prizes and exchange lectures established by The Royal Society and Académie des Sciences, in this case, given to a senior British scientist with its lecture to be given on a visit to France;^[39]
• 2012 recipient of the Balzan Prize for Epigenetics;^[40][41]
• 2014 recipient of the Gruber Prize in Genetics;^[42]
• 2014 recipient, the inaugural recipient, of the Barbara McClintock Prize for Plant Genetics and Genome Studies, from the Maize Genetics Cooperation, for "exceptional contributions in the field of plant epigenetics";^[43]
• 2015 election as Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh;^{[citation needed]}
• 2020 election as an Academician in The Pontifical Academy of Sciences;^[4]
• 2023 recognition as an honorary Doctor of Science of University of Warwick.^[44]

Baulcombe stated in a post dated 2017 that outside of the laboratory, he "promote[s] the use of plant biotechnology for crop improvement... [and that he is] particularly interested in technologies addressing problems in developing countries."^[33] He has said he works on plants "because their products are good to eat and wear and write on—and also because plants are often good models for general biology.^[14]

As of this date,^[when?] Baulcombe resided in Norwich.^{[citation needed]} He has been married to Rose Eden since 1976, and they have four children.^[6][5] His interests include music, sailing, and hill walking.^[6]

• Baulcombe, D. (2004). "RNA silencing in plants". Nature. 431 (7006): 356–363. Bibcode:2004Natur.431..356B. doi:10.1038/nature02874. PMID 15372043. S2CID 4421274.

• Taubes, Gary & Baulcombe, David (January 2007). "An Interview With: Prof. David Baulcombe". In-Cites.com. Stamford, CT: Research Services Group, Thomson Scientific. Archived from the original on 25 June 2007. Retrieved 7 October 2024. This month, in-cites correspondent Gary Taubes talks with Professor David Baulcombe of the John Innes Centre's Sainsbury Laboratory about his highly cited paper, "A species of small antisense RNA in posttranscriptional gene silencing in plants," (Hamilton AJ, Baulcombe DC, Science 286[5441]: 950-2, 1999). This paper is currently ranked at #5 among Plant & Animal Science papers published in the past decade, with 747 citations... .{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)

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