Antoine Danchin (born 7 May 1944) is a French
geneticist
A geneticist is a biologist or physician who studies genetics, the science of genes, heredity, and variation of organisms. A geneticist can be employed as a scientist or a lecturer. Geneticists may perform general research on genetic processe ...
. He is best known for his research in several fields of biology, from the structure and function of
adenylate cyclase
Adenylate cyclase (EC 4.6.1.1, also commonly known as adenyl cyclase and adenylyl cyclase, abbreviated AC) is an enzyme with systematic name ATP diphosphate-lyase (cyclizing; 3′,5′-cyclic-AMP-forming). It catalyzes the following reaction:
:A ...
, to modelisation of learning in the nervous system and the early development of
genomics
Genomics is an interdisciplinary field of biology focusing on the structure, function, evolution, mapping, and editing of genomes. A genome is an organism's complete set of DNA, including all of its genes as well as its hierarchical, three-dim ...
and
bioinformatics
Bioinformatics () is an interdisciplinary field that develops methods and software tools for understanding biological data, in particular when the data sets are large and complex. As an interdisciplinary field of science, bioinformatics combi ...
. He is the Chairman of the startup AMAbiotics which specialises in metabolic bioremediation and synthetic biology. He was the director of the Department Genomes and Genetics at the
Institut Pasteur
The Pasteur Institute (french: Institut Pasteur) is a French non-profit private foundation dedicated to the study of biology, micro-organisms, diseases, and vaccines. It is named after Louis Pasteur, who invented pasteurization and vaccines fo ...
in Paris where he headed the Genetics of Bacterial Genomes Unit.
Early life and career
He was trained as a mathematician at the
Institut Henri Poincaré
The Henri Poincaré Institute (or IHP for ''Institut Henri Poincaré'') is a mathematics research institute part of Sorbonne University, in association with the Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS). It is located in the 5th arrond ...
and a physicist at the
École Normale Supérieure
École may refer to:
* an elementary school in the French educational stages normally followed by secondary education establishments (collège and lycée)
* École (river), a tributary of the Seine flowing in région Île-de-France
* École, Savoi ...
. Working first with
Mildred Cohn
Mildred Cohn (July 12, 1913 – October 12, 2009) was an American biochemist who furthered understanding of biochemical processes through her study of chemical reactions within animal cells. She was a pioneer in the use of nuclear magnetic r ...
,
Marianne Grunberg-Manago
Marianne Grunberg-Manago (January 6, 1921 – January 3, 2013) was a Soviet-born French biochemist. Her work helped make possible key discoveries about the nature of the genetic code. Grunberg-Manago was the first woman to lead the International U ...
and Ionel Solomon in
Nuclear Magnetic Resonance
Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) is a physical phenomenon in which nuclei in a strong constant magnetic field are perturbed by a weak oscillating magnetic field (in the near field) and respond by producing an electromagnetic signal with a ...
, Danchin became an experimental
microbiologist
A microbiologist (from Ancient Greek, Greek ) is a scientist who studies microscopic life forms and processes. This includes study of the growth, interactions and characteristics of Microorganism, microscopic organisms such as bacteria, algae, f ...
in the early seventies.
He created with
Philippe Courrège and
Jean-Pierre Changeux
Jean-Pierre Changeux (; born 6 April 1936) is a French neuroscientist known for his research in several fields of biology, from the structure and function of proteins (with a focus on the allosteric proteins), to the early development of the ner ...
at the
Institut de Biologie Physico-Chimique in Paris, France, a working seminar where they worked together on the construction of mathematical models of learning and memory.
Interested in University training he created, with
Maurice Guéron, the first semester of Biology at the
École Polytechnique
École may refer to:
* an elementary school in the French educational stages normally followed by secondary education establishments (collège and lycée)
* École (river), a tributary of the Seine flowing in région Île-de-France
* École, Savoi ...
, and developed his teaching during four years. Among his first students one can find
Daniel Kahn,
Patrick Charnay, and many others. The main goal of his research has been to try to understand how genes can function collectively in the cell. This led him to work on regulation systems which control global gene expression in bacteria. Part of his work was devoted to the study of the enzymes that synthesize cyclic AMP. He established the reference classification of adenylate cyclases
after his laboratory successfully cloned and sequenced the genes of adenylyl cyclase
toxins
A toxin is a naturally occurring organic poison produced by metabolic activities of living cells or organisms. Toxins occur especially as a protein or conjugated protein. The term toxin was first used by organic chemist Ludwig Brieger (1849–1 ...
from the
whooping cough
Whooping cough, also known as pertussis or the 100-day cough, is a highly contagious bacterial disease. Initial symptoms are usually similar to those of the common cold with a runny nose, fever, and mild cough, but these are followed by two or ...
agent
as well as from the agent of
anthrax
Anthrax is an infection caused by the bacterium ''Bacillus anthracis''. It can occur in four forms: skin, lungs, intestinal, and injection. Symptom onset occurs between one day and more than two months after the infection is contracted. The sk ...
.
This work led him to trigger ethical reflections on the practices of molecular genetics and genomics at a time when this was not considered important.
Danchin started in 1985 a collaboration with computer scientists for evaluation of
artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech re ...
techniques to the study of integrated problems in
molecular genetics
Molecular genetics is a sub-field of biology that addresses how differences in the structures or expression of DNA molecules manifests as variation among organisms. Molecular genetics often applies an "investigative approach" to determine the ...
.
This convinced him that it was time to investigate genomes as wholes, provided that an important effort in computer sciences was initiated in parallel (
in silico
In biology and other experimental sciences, an ''in silico'' experiment is one performed on computer or via computer simulation. The phrase is pseudo-Latin for 'in silicon' (correct la, in silicio), referring to silicon in computer chips. It ...
biology). Early in 1987 he proposed that a sequencing program should be undertaken for ''
Bacillus subtilis
''Bacillus subtilis'', known also as the hay bacillus or grass bacillus, is a Gram-positive, catalase-positive bacterium, found in soil and the gastrointestinal tract of ruminants, humans and marine sponges. As a member of the genus ''Bacillu ...
''. This proposal was actualized by a European joint effort on this genome, starting in 1988. The complete sequence was published in 1997.
The first significant and unexpected discovery of this work was, in 1991, that many genes (at the time, half of the genes) were of completely unknown function. This led him to try to organize
bioinformatics
Bioinformatics () is an interdisciplinary field that develops methods and software tools for understanding biological data, in particular when the data sets are large and complex. As an interdisciplinary field of science, bioinformatics combi ...
in France with the help of several colleagues at universities,
CNRS
The French National Centre for Scientific Research (french: link=no, Centre national de la recherche scientifique, CNRS) is the French state research organisation and is the largest fundamental science agency in Europe.
In 2016, it employed 31,637 ...
and
INRIA
The National Institute for Research in Digital Science and Technology (Inria) () is a French national research institution focusing on computer science and applied mathematics.
It was created under the name ''Institut de recherche en informatiq ...
, through the creation of a nationwide group, GDR 1029 (1991–1995) and subsequently through the coordination of the bioinformatics programme of the Groupement de Recherche et d'Etudes des Genomes (1992–1996), then at the Comité de Coordination des Sciences du Vivant (1998–2000). Re-sequencing and re-annotation of the ''B. subtilis'' genome was completed in 2009 to update the sequence and annotation of this
reference genome
A reference genome (also known as a reference assembly) is a digital nucleic acid sequence database, assembled by scientists as a representative example of the set of genes in one idealized individual organism of a species. As they are assemble ...
.
In year 2000, Danchin created the HKU-Pasteur Research Centre in Hong Kong, meant to develop microbial genomics in the region, with the help of the Innovation and Technology Commission of the Hong Kong SAR government to develop bioinformatics (programme Biosupport).
Danchin is now developing theoretical reflections and experiments in the domain of
synthetic biology
Synthetic biology (SynBio) is a multidisciplinary area of research that seeks to create new biological parts, devices, and systems, or to redesign systems that are already found in nature.
It is a branch of science that encompasses a broad ran ...
,
trying to make explicit the idea that cells behave as computers (
Turing machines
A Turing machine is a mathematical model of computation describing an abstract machine that manipulates symbols on a strip of tape according to a table of rules. Despite the model's simplicity, it is capable of implementing any computer algori ...
) making computers.
Together with
Victor de Lorenzo, he created the free and open access journal ''Symplectic Biology'', devoted to publishing innovative ideas in systems and synthetic biology.
Antoine Danchin is the father of
Raphael Danchin.
References
Selected works
''The Delphic Boat: What Genomes Tell Us'' Translated by Alison Quayle,
Harvard University Press
Harvard University Press (HUP) is a publishing house established on January 13, 1913, as a division of Harvard University, and focused on academic publishing. It is a member of the Association of American University Presses. After the retirem ...
, 2003.
External links
Institut de Biologie Physico-Chimique*
PubMed referencesfree full text references
*
AMAbiotics SAS
{{DEFAULTSORT:Danchin, Antoine
1944 births
French biologists
French geneticists
French bioinformaticians
École Normale Supérieure alumni
Members of the French Academy of Sciences
Living people
Synthetic biologists