Michael Ashburner (born 23 May 1942) is a biologist and Emeritus Professor in the Department of Genetics at

University of Cambridge The University of Cambridge is a public collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209 and granted a royal charter by Henry III in 1231, Cambridge is the world's third oldest surviving university and one of its most pr ...

. He is also the former joint-head and co-founder of the

European Bioinformatics Institute The European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI) is an Intergovernmental Organization (IGO) which, as part of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) family, focuses on research and services in bioinformatics. It is located on the Wel ...

(EBI) of the

European Molecular Biology Laboratory The European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) is an intergovernmental organization dedicated to molecular biology research and is supported by 27 member states, two prospect states, and one associate member state. EMBL was created in 1974 and ...

(EMBL) and a

Fellow A fellow is a concept whose exact meaning depends on context. In learned or professional societies, it refers to a privileged member who is specially elected in recognition of their work and achievements. Within the context of higher education ...

of Churchill College, Cambridge.

Education

Born in Brighton,

Sussex, England Sussex (), from the Old English (), is a historic county in South East England that was formerly an independent medieval Anglo-Saxon kingdom. It is bounded to the west by Hampshire, north by Surrey, northeast by Kent, south by the English C ...

, Ashburner attended High Wycombe Royal Grammar School from 1953 to 1960. He studied at Churchill College, Cambridge, and received his

Bachelor of Arts Bachelor of arts (BA or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree course is generally completed in three or four year ...

in Natural Sciences Tripos (Genetics) in 1964, his PhD from the Department of Genetics in 1968, and was awarded a

Doctor of Science Doctor of Science ( la, links=no, Scientiae Doctor), usually abbreviated Sc.D., D.Sc., S.D., or D.S., is an academic research degree awarded in a number of countries throughout the world. In some countries, "Doctor of Science" is the degree used f ...

in 1978.

Research and career

Most of Ashburner's research has been on the model organism ''

Drosophila melanogaster ''Drosophila melanogaster'' is a species of fly (the taxonomic order Diptera) in the family Drosophilidae. The species is often referred to as the fruit fly or lesser fruit fly, or less commonly the " vinegar fly" or "pomace fly". Starting with ...

''. Ashburner's career began in the early period of molecular biology prior to the development of most of the recombinant DNA techniques in use today, such as Northern/Southern/Western blotting. Nevertheless, by observing patterns of "puffing" in polytene chromosomes, he established the existence of a cascade of genetic controls in the post-larval development triggered by

ecdysone Ecdysone is a prohormone of the major insect molting hormone 20-hydroxyecdysone, which is secreted from the prothoracic glands. It is of steroidal structure. Insect molting hormones (ecdysone and its homologues) are generally called ecdysteroids. ...

. The Ashburner model of 1974 became a paradigm for

metazoan Animals are multicellular, eukaryotic organisms in the biological kingdom Animalia. With few exceptions, animals consume organic material, breathe oxygen, are able to move, can reproduce sexually, and go through an ontogenetic stage in ...

gene regulation inasmuch as the

Jacob Jacob (; ; ar, يَعْقُوب, Yaʿqūb; gr, Ἰακώβ, Iakṓb), later given the name Israel, is regarded as a patriarch of the Israelites and is an important figure in Abrahamic religions, such as Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. J ...

- Monod model did for prokaryotes. Ashburner collaborated widely and mentored numerous PhD students and

Postdoctoral research A postdoctoral fellow, postdoctoral researcher, or simply postdoc, is a person professionally conducting research after the completion of their doctoral studies (typically a PhD). The ultimate goal of a postdoctoral research position is to pu ...

students during his career. Ashburner was also a member of the consortium that eventually sequenced and annotated the ''

'' genome. Ashburner's recollections of the sequencing of the ''D. melanogaster'' genome forms the basis of a book entitled "Won for All: How the Drosophila Genome Was Sequenced". A prolonged effort by his laboratory to characterise the '' Adh'' region became invaluable for validating annotation strategies when large-scale genome information became available. Ashburner and his colleagues have received funding from the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), the Medical Research Council (MRC) and Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) for their studies on Drosophila genomics leveraging the ''D. melanogaster'' genome and its annotation.

Computational biology

Ashburner was also an early pioneer in the application of computers to biology. His contributions include his active participation in setting up

FlyBase FlyBase is an online bioinformatics database and the primary repository of genetic and molecular data for the insect family Drosophilidae. For the most extensively studied species and model organism, ''Drosophila melanogaster'', a wide range of d ...

and the development of

Open Biomedical Ontologies The Open Biological and Biomedical Ontologies (OBO) Foundry is a group of people dedicated to build and maintain ontologies related to the life sciences. The OBO Foundry establishes a set of principles for ontology development for creating a s ...

to allow machine-searchable annotation of biological information, particularly the

Gene Ontology The Gene Ontology (GO) is a major bioinformatics initiative to unify the representation of gene and gene product attributes across all species. More specifically, the project aims to: 1) maintain and develop its controlled vocabulary of gene and ge ...

and

ChEBI Chemical Entities of Biological Interest, also known as ChEBI, is a chemical database and ontology of molecular entities focused on 'small' chemical compounds, that is part of the Open Biomedical Ontologies (OBO) effort at the European Bioinf ...

. He was instrumental in establishing the EBI, as well as securing its location in the UK, and acted as the first head of the EBI jointly with Graham Cameron.

Open science advocacy

As part of his involvement the sequencing of the ''D. melanogaster'' genome, Ashburner played an instrumental role in ensuring that the resulting sequence and annotations would be made publicly available. Additionally, Ashburner made a strong case for the human genome published in

Science Science is a systematic endeavor that Scientific method, builds and organizes knowledge in the form of Testability, testable explanations and predictions about the universe. Science may be as old as the human species, and some of the earli ...

in 2000 by

Celera Genomics Celera is a subsidiary of Quest Diagnostics which focuses on genetic sequencing and related technologies. It was founded in 1998 as a business unit of Applera, spun off into an independent company in 2008, and finally acquired by Quest Diagnost ...

to be made freely available, and has spoken out repeatedly against the privatization of genomic resources. Ashburner was also one of the signatories of the first open letter to

in 2001 calling for a centralized, open repository of the scientific literature, and subsequently became a strong advocate of Open Access publishing, speaking out for this cause in the scientific literature and popular media. He also provided written evidence to the UK Parliament Select Committee on Science and Technology supporting Open Access publishing and served on the initial advisory board of

UK PubMed Central The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and North ...

, the first global mirror site of the

PubMed Central PubMed Central (PMC) is a free digital repository that archives open access full-text scholarly articles that have been published in biomedical and life sciences journals. As one of the major research databases developed by the National Center fo ...

repository of freely available biological literature.

Awards and honours

Ashburner was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the

American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (abbreviation: AAA&S) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, a ...

in 1993. He received the

Gregor Mendel Gregor Johann Mendel, OSA (; cs, Řehoř Jan Mendel; 20 July 1822 – 6 January 1884) was a biologist, meteorologist, mathematician, Augustinian friar and abbot of St. Thomas' Abbey in Brünn (''Brno''), Margraviate of Moravia. Mendel was ...

Medal from the Academy of Sciences, Czech Republic in 1998, the first George W. Beadle Award of the Genetics Society of America in 1999, an honorary Doctorate from the

University of Crete The University of Crete (UoC; Greek: Πανεπιστήμιο Κρήτης) is a multi-disciplinary, research-oriented institution in Crete, Greece, located in the cities of Rethymno (official seat) and Heraklion, and one of the country's most aca ...

in 2002, an honorary Doctor of Science from the

University of Edinburgh The University of Edinburgh ( sco, University o Edinburgh, gd, Oilthigh Dhùn Èideann; abbreviated as ''Edin.'' in post-nominals) is a public research university based in Edinburgh, Scotland. Granted a royal charter by King James VI in 15 ...

in 2003, the Genetics Society Medal of the UK Genetics Society in 2005 and the Franklin Award of the Bioinformatics Organization in 2006. Ashburner was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1990, his certificate of election reads:

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ashburner, Michael 1942 births Living people People from Brighton Members of the European Molecular Biology Organization Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Fellows of the International Society for Computational Biology Fellows of the Royal Society English geneticists British bioinformaticians Alumni of Churchill College, Cambridge Fellows of Churchill College, Cambridge People educated at the Royal Grammar School, High Wycombe English biologists