Jane Grimwood is a British microbiologist.

Early life and education

Grimwood was born in England. Her father was a chemist, and she always wanted to be a scientist as a child. Grimwood was awarded her B.Sc. and Ph.D. in Microbiology from the

University of Leeds , mottoeng = And knowledge will be increased , established = 1831 – Leeds School of Medicine1874 – Yorkshire College of Science1884 - Yorkshire College1887 – affiliated to the federal Victoria University1904 – University of Leeds , ...

in the United Kingdom. She did postdoctoral research at the

University of Oxford , mottoeng = The Lord is my light , established = , endowment = £6.1 billion (including colleges) (2019) , budget = £2.145 billion (2019–20) , chancellor ...

University of San Francisco The University of San Francisco (USF) is a private Jesuit university in San Francisco, California. The university's main campus is located on a setting between the Golden Gate Bridge and Golden Gate Park. The main campus is nicknamed "The Hil ...

and

Dartmouth College Dartmouth College (; ) is a private research university in Hanover, New Hampshire. Established in 1769 by Eleazar Wheelock, it is one of the nine colonial colleges chartered before the American Revolution. Although founded to educate Native ...

Career

Human Genome Project

Grimwood was an important part of the Human Genome Project effort, working from the Stanford Human Genome Center. Grimwood stated, "I feel very lucky to have been a part of the Human Genome Project. It was arguably the best international collaborative project of our lifetime." She and her team worked on sequencing and analyzing chromosomes 5, 16, and 19 -- "320 million base pairs . . . comprising more than 10% of the human genome." They discovered that chromosome 19 has the highest gene density of any human chromosome, and were able to link certain genes on the chromosome to genetic diseases including insulin-resistant diabetes.

Current work

Since the Human Genome Project finished in 2008, Grimwood has led a group of researchers who focus on sequencing and finishing a group of

eukaryotic Eukaryotes () are organisms whose Cell (biology), cells have a cell nucleus, nucleus. All animals, plants, fungi, and many unicellular organisms, are Eukaryotes. They belong to the group of organisms Eukaryota or Eukarya, which is one of the ...

genomes that include fungi, plants, and vertebrates. The lab focuses on the genomes of organisms relevant to the development of sustainable biofuels and global food security. Organisms they have worked on with this goal include "the American poplar, the hardy perennial grass, switchgrass and soybean." Currently, she is the co-director of the Genome Sequencing Center and Faculty Investigator at the HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology. In August 2015, the

National Science Foundation The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent agency of the United States government that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National ...

awarded a $2.4 million grant jointly to a group of five researchers, including Grimwood, to further genomics research involving Upland cotton.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Grimwood, Jane British microbiologists Living people Year of birth missing (living people) Women microbiologists Alumni of the University of Leeds 21st-century American scientists 21st-century American women scientists