John Brookfield, (born 30 May 1955), is a British

population geneticist Population genetics is a subfield of genetics that deals with genetic differences within and between populations, and is a part of evolutionary biology. Studies in this branch of biology examine such phenomena as adaptation, speciation, and popu ...

. He is

Professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an Academy, academic rank at university, universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a "person who pr ...

Evolution Evolution is change in the heritable characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. These characteristics are the expressions of genes, which are passed on from parent to offspring during reproduction. Variation ...

ary

Genetics Genetics is the study of genes, genetic variation, and heredity in organisms.Hartl D, Jones E (2005) It is an important branch in biology because heredity is vital to organisms' evolution. Gregor Mendel, a Moravian Augustinian friar wor ...

at the

University of Nottingham The University of Nottingham is a public university, public research university in Nottingham, United Kingdom. It was founded as University College Nottingham in 1881, and was granted a royal charter in 1948. The University of Nottingham belongs t ...

, in the School of

Biology Biology is the scientific study of life. It is a natural science with a broad scope but has several unifying themes that tie it together as a single, coherent field. For instance, all organisms are made up of cells that process hereditary i ...

Research summary

Brookfield is interested in how the

genome In the fields of molecular biology and genetics, a genome is all the genetic information of an organism. It consists of nucleotide sequences of DNA (or RNA in RNA viruses). The nuclear genome includes protein-coding genes and non-coding ge ...

evolves and has recently focussed on the evolution of

DNA sequences A nucleic acid sequence is a succession of bases signified by a series of a set of five different letters that indicate the order of nucleotides forming alleles within a DNA (using GACT) or RNA (GACU) molecule. By convention, sequences are usua ...

which control

development Development or developing may refer to: Arts *Development hell, when a project is stuck in development *Filmmaking, development phase, including finance and budgeting *Development (music), the process thematic material is reshaped *Photographi ...

, particularly in

Drosophila ''Drosophila'' () is a genus of flies, belonging to the family Drosophilidae, whose members are often called "small fruit flies" or (less frequently) pomace flies, vinegar flies, or wine flies, a reference to the characteristic of many species ...

, and on the

evolution Evolution is change in the heritable characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. These characteristics are the expressions of genes, which are passed on from parent to offspring during reproduction. Variation ...

transposable elements A transposable element (TE, transposon, or jumping gene) is a nucleic acid sequence in DNA that can change its position within a genome, sometimes creating or reversing mutations and altering the cell's genetic identity and genome size. Transpo ...

Education, appointments and honours

Brookfield received his BA in

Zoology Zoology ()The pronunciation of zoology as is usually regarded as nonstandard, though it is not uncommon. is the branch of biology that studies the Animal, animal kingdom, including the anatomy, structure, embryology, evolution, Biological clas ...

from 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 ...

1976. He received his Ph.D. in Population Genetics at the

University of London The University of London (UoL; abbreviated as Lond or more rarely Londin in post-nominals) is a federal public research university located in London, England, United Kingdom. The university was established by royal charter in 1836 as a degree ...

in 1980. Following a post as Research Demonstrator in Genetics at the University College of Swansea from 1979-1981, he became a visiting fellow in the Laboratory of Genetics at The

National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) conducts research into the effects of the environment on human disease, as one of the 27 institutes and centers of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). It is located in the Rese ...

North Carolina North Carolina () is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States. The state is the 28th largest and 9th-most populous of the United States. It is bordered by Virginia to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the east, Georgia and So ...

from 1981-1983. Returning to the UK, he became a Lecturer in Genetics at the

University of Leicester , mottoeng = So that they may have life , established = , type = public research university , endowment = £20.0 million , budget = £326 million , chancellor = David Willetts , vice_chancellor = Nishan Canagarajah , head_labe ...

from 1983-1986. He is now

of evolutionary genetics at the

. Brookfield is an invited Fellow of the Society of Biology was appointed Fellow of the Institute of Biology in 2009, and has served as Vice-President (External Relations) of the Genetics Society. He served on the UK RAE panel for the assessment of Biological Sciences in both 2001 and 200

Popular Science

In 2006, Brookfield was invited to comment on the

Chicken or the egg The chicken or the egg causality dilemma is commonly stated as the question, "which came first: the chicken or the egg?" The dilemma stems from the observation that all chickens hatch from eggs and all chicken eggs are laid by chickens. "Chicke ...

controversy, along with a number of others. All parties came down on the egg first side of the debate. Brookfield gives his reasoning as "The first chicken must have differed from its parents by some genetic change, perhaps a very subtle one, but one which caused this bird to be the first ever to fulfil our criteria for truly being a chicken. Thus the living organism inside the eggshell would have had the same DNA as the chicken that it would develop into, and thus would itself be a member of the species of chicken." To further public understanding of evolutionary genetics, Brookfield has created a podcast explaining some of the issues, and as part of the Nottingham University 200 years of Darwin Celebrations, delivered Darwin's famous lecture On the Origin of the Species, in full Victorian dress. He has additionally written in the media about DNA profiling.

Bibliography

Carr, M., Soloway, J.R., Robinson, T.E., and Brookfield, J.F.Y. (2001) An investigation of the cause of low variability on the fourth chromosome of Drosophila melanogaster. ''Molecular Biology and Evolution'' 18, 2260-2269. Brookfield, J.F.Y. (2001) Genome evolution. Pp. 351–372 in: ''Handbook of Statistical Genetics''. Eds. M. Bishop, D. Balding & C. Cannings John Wiley Chichester. Johnson, L.J. and Brookfield, J.F.Y. (2002) Evolutionary dynamics of a selfishly spreading gene that stimulates sexual reproduction in a partially sexual population. ''J. Evolutionary Biology'' 15, 42-48. Carr, M., Soloway, J.R., Robinson, T.E. and Brookfield, J.F.Y. (2002) Mechanisms regulating the copy numbers of six LTR retrotransposons in the genome of Drosophila melanogaster. ''Chromosoma'' 110, 511-518. Edwards, R.J., Sockett, R.E., and Brookfield, J.F.Y. (2002) A simple method for genome-wide screening for advantageous insertions of mobile DNAs in Escherichia coli. ''Current Biology'' 12, 863-867. Edwards, R. J. and Brookfield, J.F.Y. (2003) Transiently beneficial insertions could maintain mobile DNA sequences in variable environments. ''Molecular Biology and Evolution'' 20, 30-37. Johnson, L.J. and Brookfield, J.F.Y. (2003) Evolution of spatial expression pattern. ''Evolution and Development'' 5, 593-599. Phinchongsakuldit, J., MacArthur, S., and Brookfield, J.F.Y. (2004) Evolution of developmental genes: Molecular microevolution of enhancer sequences at the Ubx locus in Drosophila and its impact on developmental phenotypes. ''Molecular Biology and Evolution'' 21, 348-363.

External links

Lab Home PagePubMed Publications

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Brookfield, John 1955 births Living people British geneticists English biologists British evolutionary biologists Alumni of the University of Oxford Alumni of the University of London Academics of Swansea University Academics of the University of Leicester Academics of the University of Nottingham