Gary Stormo (born 1950) is an American geneticist and currently Joseph Erlanger Professor in the Department of Genetics and the Center for Genome Sciences and Systems Biology at Washington University School of Medicine in St Louis. He is considered one of the pioneers of

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 ...

and

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 ...

. His research combines experimental and computational approaches in order to identify and predict regulatory sequences in DNA and

RNA Ribonucleic acid (RNA) is a polymeric molecule essential in various biological roles in coding, decoding, regulation and expression of genes. RNA and deoxyribonucleic acid ( DNA) are nucleic acids. Along with lipids, proteins, and carbohydra ...

, and their contributions to the regulatory networks that control

gene expression Gene expression is the process by which information from a gene is used in the synthesis of a functional gene product that enables it to produce end products, protein or non-coding RNA, and ultimately affect a phenotype, as the final effect. The ...

Education

Stormo initially majored in physics as an undergraduate at the California Institute of Technology, but switched to biology in his junior year. He received his PhD in

molecular biology Molecular biology is the branch of biology that seeks to understand the molecular basis of biological activity in and between cells, including biomolecular synthesis, modification, mechanisms, and interactions. The study of chemical and physi ...

in 1981 from the

University of Colorado at Boulder The University of Colorado Boulder (CU Boulder, CU, or Colorado) is a public research university in Boulder, Colorado. Founded in 1876, five months before Colorado became a state, it is the flagship university of the University of Colorado sys ...

Research

Following his PhD, Stormo stayed at the University of Colorado as a faculty member in the department of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology, becoming a professor before moving to

Washington University in St. Louis Washington University in St. Louis (WashU or WUSTL) is a private research university with its main campus in St. Louis County, and Clayton, Missouri. Founded in 1853, the university is named after George Washington. Washington University is r ...

in 1999. Stormo's research combines experimental and computational approaches to understand regulation of gene expression. His experimental work focuses on protein–DNA interactions and their role in gene regulation. His computational work involves analysis of these interactions and developing pattern recognition algorithms to discover regulatory sites in DNA and RNA. In 1982, Stormo and his colleagues introduced the

Position Weight Matrix A position weight matrix (PWM), also known as a position-specific weight matrix (PSWM) or position-specific scoring matrix (PSSM), is a commonly used representation of motifs (patterns) in biological sequences. PWMs are often derived from a set ...

(PWM), a now commonly used representation of motifs (patterns) in biological sequences. Consensus sequences had previously been used to represent patterns in biological sequences, but had difficulties in the prediction of new occurrences of these patterns. The first use of PWMs was in the discovery of

sites that function as

translation Translation is the communication of the Meaning (linguistic), meaning of a #Source and target languages, source-language text by means of an Dynamic and formal equivalence, equivalent #Source and target languages, target-language text. The ...

initiation sites. The advantages of PWMs over consensus sequences have made PWMs a popular method for representing patterns in biological sequences and an essential component in modern algorithms for motif discovery. He has published over 150 scientific papers.

Roles and honours

Stormo served on the board of directors of the International Society for Computational Biology (ISCB) from 2000 to 2004 and was honoured as an ISCB Fellow in 2010. He was elected as a fellow of the American Medical Informatics Association in 2001. Stormo was Executive Editor of the journal ''

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 ...

'' from 1994 to 1999. In 2014, he was appointed one of the first Honorary Editors of ''Bioinformatics''. Stormo has also served as Deputy Editor-in-Chief of the journal ''

PLOS Computational Biology ''PLOS Computational Biology'' is a monthly peer-reviewed open access scientific journal covering computational biology. It was established in 2005 by the Public Library of Science in association with the International Society for Computational B ...

''. He is currently co-editor of the journal ''Current Protocols in Bioinformatics''.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Stormo, Gary American bioinformaticians Living people American geneticists California Institute of Technology alumni University of Colorado Boulder alumni Fellows of the International Society for Computational Biology 1950 births Washington University School of Medicine faculty