The Wellcome Sanger Institute, previously known as The Sanger Centre and Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, is a
non-profit
A nonprofit organization (NPO) or non-profit organisation, also known as a non-business entity, not-for-profit organization, or nonprofit institution, is a legal entity organized and operated for a collective, public or social benefit, in co ...
British
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
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 ...
research institute, primarily funded by the
Wellcome Trust
The Wellcome Trust is a charitable foundation focused on health research based in London, in the United Kingdom. It was established in 1936 with legacies from the pharmaceutical magnate Henry Wellcome (founder of one of the predecessors of Glaxo ...
.
It is located on the
Wellcome Genome Campus
The Wellcome Genome Campus is a scientific research campus built in the grounds of Hinxton Hall, Hinxton in Cambridgeshire, England.
Campus
The Campus is home to some institutes and organisations in genomics and computational biology. The Camp ...
by the village of
Hinxton
Hinxton is a village in South Cambridgeshire, England.
The River Cam runs through the village, as does the Cambridge to Liverpool Street railway, though the village has no station. Hinxton parish's southern boundaries form the border between Ca ...
, outside
Cambridge
Cambridge ( ) is a university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cambridge bec ...
. It shares this location with 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 Well ...
. It was established in 1992 and named after double
Nobel Laureate
The Nobel Prizes ( sv, Nobelpriset, no, Nobelprisen) are awarded annually by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, the Swedish Academy, the Karolinska Institutet, and the Norwegian Nobel Committee to individuals and organizations who make out ...
Frederick Sanger
Frederick Sanger (; 13 August 1918 – 19 November 2013) was an English biochemist who received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry twice.
He won the 1958 Chemistry Prize for determining the amino acid sequence of insulin and numerous other p ...
. It was conceived as a large scale
DNA sequencing
DNA sequencing is the process of determining the nucleic acid sequence – the order of nucleotides in DNA. It includes any method or technology that is used to determine the order of the four bases: adenine, guanine, cytosine, and thymine. Th ...
centre to participate in the
Human Genome Project
The Human Genome Project (HGP) was an international scientific research project with the goal of determining the base pairs that make up human DNA, and of identifying, mapping and sequencing all of the genes of the human genome from both a ...
, and went on to make the largest single contribution to the gold standard sequence of the
human genome
The human genome is a complete set of nucleic acid sequences for humans, encoded as DNA within the 23 chromosome pairs in cell nuclei and in a small DNA molecule found within individual mitochondria. These are usually treated separately as the n ...
. From its inception the institute established and has maintained a policy of
data sharing
Data sharing is the practice of making data used for scholarly research available to other investigators. Many funding agencies, institutions, and publication venues have policies regarding data sharing because transparency and openness are consid ...
, and does much of its research in
collaboration
Collaboration (from Latin ''com-'' "with" + ''laborare'' "to labor", "to work") is the process of two or more people, entities or organizations working together to complete a task or achieve a goal. Collaboration is similar to cooperation. Most ...
.
Since 2000, the institute expanded its mission to understand "the role of genetics in health and disease". The institute now employs around 900 people and engages in five main areas of research: Cancer, Ageing and Somatic Mutation; Cellular Genetics; Human Genetics; Parasite and Microbes; and the Tree of Life.
Facilities and resources
Campus
![DNA Helix and Tree of Life stain glass window](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0a/DNA_Helix_and_Tree_of_Life_stain_glass_window.JPG)
In 1993 the then 17 Sanger Centre staff moved into temporary laboratory space at Hinxton Hall in
Cambridgeshire
Cambridgeshire (abbreviated Cambs.) is a Counties of England, county in the East of England, bordering Lincolnshire to the north, Norfolk to the north-east, Suffolk to the east, Essex and Hertfordshire to the south, and Bedfordshire and North ...
.
This site was to become the Wellcome Genome Campus, which has a growing population of around 1300 staff, approximately 900 of whom work at the Sanger Institute. The Genome Campus also includes the Wellcome Trust Conference Centre and 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 Well ...
. A major extension of the campus was officially opened in 2005; the buildings accommodate new laboratories, a
data centre
A data center (American English) or data centre (British English)See spelling differences. is a building, a dedicated space within a building, or a group of buildings used to house computer systems and associated components, such as telecommunic ...
and staff amenities.
In discussing the name of the centre, Sanger (still alive when the centre was opened) told
John Sulston
Sir John Edward Sulston (27 March 1942 – 6 March 2018) was a British biologist and academic who won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his work on the cell lineage and genome of the worm ''Caenorhabditis elegans'' in 2002 with ...
, the founding director, that the centre "had better be good." Sulston commented, "I rather wished I hadn’t asked."
Sequencing
The Sanger Institute's sequencing staff handle millions of
DNA samples each week. The institute "capitalises on leading-edge technologies to answer questions unanswerable only a few years ago". The advances in technology allow the Sanger Institute to carry out sequencing of the genomes of individual humans,
vertebrate
Vertebrates () comprise all animal taxa within the subphylum Vertebrata () ( chordates with backbones), including all mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and fish. Vertebrates represent the overwhelming majority of the phylum Chordata, ...
species
In biology, a species is the basic unit of classification and a taxonomic rank of an organism, as well as a unit of biodiversity. A species is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of the appropriate s ...
and
pathogens
In biology, a pathogen ( el, πάθος, "suffering", "passion" and , "producer of") in the oldest and broadest sense, is any organism or agent that can produce disease. A pathogen may also be referred to as an infectious agent, or simply a germ ...
, at an ever-increasing pace and reducing cost. The institute has more than 100 ongoing pathogen sequencing projects. The output of the Sanger Institute is around 10 billion
bases of raw sequence data per day.
Scientific resources
Bioinformatic
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 combine ...
databases resources are one of the outcomes of research programmes that the Sanger Institute is involved in. Those hosted by the Sanger Institute include:
*
COSMIC, a catalogue of
somatic
Somatic may refer to:
* Somatic (biology), referring to the cells of the body in contrast to the germ line cells
** Somatic cell, a non-gametic cell in a multicellular organism
* Somatic nervous system, the portion of the vertebrate nervous sys ...
mutations in cancer
*
DECIPHER
DECIPHER is a web-based resource and database of genomic variation data from analysis of patient DNA. It documents submicroscopic Chromosome abnormality, chromosome abnormalities (Deletion (genetics), microdeletions and Gene duplication, duplic ...
, a database of chromosomal imbalance and
phenotype
In genetics, the phenotype () is the set of observable characteristics or traits of an organism. The term covers the organism's morphology or physical form and structure, its developmental processes, its biochemical and physiological proper ...
in humans, using Ensembl resources
*
Ensembl
Ensembl genome database project is a scientific project at the European Bioinformatics Institute, which provides a centralized resource for geneticists, molecular biologists and other researchers studying the genomes of our own species and other v ...
, a genome browser co-hosted by the European Bioinformatics Institute.
* GeneDB, a
pathogen
In biology, a pathogen ( el, πάθος, "suffering", "passion" and , "producer of") in the oldest and broadest sense, is any organism or agent that can produce disease. A pathogen may also be referred to as an infectious agent, or simply a germ ...
sequence database
*
Mouse Genetics Project, including a database of standardised phenotypic analysis for many hundreds of mutant mice.
*
Vega
Vega is the brightest star in the northern constellation of Lyra. It has the Bayer designation α Lyrae, which is Latinised to Alpha Lyrae and abbreviated Alpha Lyr or α Lyr. This star is relatively close at only from the Sun, an ...
, a vertebrate genome annotation resource
Several databases were initiated at the Sanger Institute but are now hosted elsewhere:
*
MEROPS
MEROPS is an online database for peptidases (also known as proteases, proteinases and proteolytic enzymes) and their inhibitors. The classification scheme for peptidases was published by Rawlings & Barrett in 1993, and that for protein inhibitor ...
, a
peptidase
A protease (also called a peptidase, proteinase, or proteolytic enzyme) is an enzyme that catalyzes (increases reaction rate or "speeds up") proteolysis, breaking down proteins into smaller polypeptides or single amino acids, and spurring the fo ...
database
*
Pfam
Pfam is a database of protein families that includes their annotations and multiple sequence alignments generated using hidden Markov models. The most recent version, Pfam 35.0, was released in November 2021 and contains 19,632 families.
Uses
...
, a
protein family
A protein family is a group of evolutionarily related proteins. In many cases, a protein family has a corresponding gene family, in which each gene encodes a corresponding protein with a 1:1 relationship. The term "protein family" should not be c ...
database
*
Rfam
Rfam is a database containing information about non-coding RNA (ncRNA) families and other structured RNA elements. It is an annotated, open access database originally developed at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in collaboration with Janel ...
, an
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 ...
family database
*
TreeFam TreeFam (Tree families database) is a database of phylogenetic trees of animal genes. It aims at developing a curated resource that gives reliable information about ortholog and paralog assignments, and evolutionary history of various gene families. ...
, a database of
phylogenetic
In biology, phylogenetics (; from Greek φυλή/ φῦλον [] "tribe, clan, race", and wikt:γενετικός, γενετικός [] "origin, source, birth") is the study of the evolutionary history and relationships among or within groups o ...
trees for animal genes
*
WormBase, a database on the biology and sequence of the
model organism
A model organism (often shortened to model) is a non-human species that is extensively studied to understand particular biological phenomena, with the expectation that discoveries made in the model organism will provide insight into the workin ...
''
C. elegans
''Caenorhabditis elegans'' () is a free-living transparent nematode about 1 mm in length that lives in temperate soil environments. It is the type species of its genus. The name is a blend of the Greek ''caeno-'' (recent), ''rhabditis'' (r ...
'' and other related Nematodes.
*
WormBase ParaSite, a database for the genomics for parasitic
helminths
Parasitic worms, also known as helminths, are large macroparasites; adults can generally be seen with the naked eye. Many are intestinal worms that are soil-transmitted and infect the gastrointestinal tract. Other parasitic worms such as schi ...
(both Nematodes and Platyhelminthes).
Research
![Hinxton hall](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7c/Hinxton_hall.jpg)
Scientific research at the Sanger Institute is organised into five Scientific Programmes, each defining a major area of research with a particular biological, disease or analytic focus. The current Programmes at the Sanger Institute are Cancer, Ageing and Somatic Mutation, Cellular Genetics, Human Genetics, Parasites and Microbes and Tree of Life. Studies from all programmes provide insights into human, pathogen, cellular evolution, the phenotypic and hence biological consequences of genome variation and the processes which cause mutations.
Cancer, Ageing and Somatic Mutation Programme
Provides leadership in data aggregation and informatics innovation, develops high-throughput cellular models of cancer for genome-wide functional screens and drug testing, and explores somatic mutation's role in clonal evolution, ageing and development. This Programme includes the
Cancer Genome Project
The Cancer Genome Project is part of the cancer, aging, and somatic mutation research based at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in The United Kingdom. It aims to identify sequence variants/mutations critical in the development of human cancers. ...
.
Cellular Genetics Programme
Explores human gene function by studying the impact of genome variation on cell biology. Large-scale systematic screens are used to discover the impact of naturally occurring and engineered genome mutations in human induced pluripotent cells (hIPSCs), their differentiated derivatives and other cell types. It is one of the founder programmes driving the creation and organisation of the international
Human Cell Atlas
The Human Cell Atlas is a project to describe all cell types in the human body. The initiative was announced by a consortium after its inaugural meeting in London in October 2016, which established the first phase of the project. Aviv Regev an ...
initiative.
Human Genetics Programme
The institute's research in
human genetics
Human genetics is the study of inheritance as it occurs in human beings. Human genetics encompasses a variety of overlapping fields including: classical genetics, cytogenetics, molecular genetics, biochemical genetics, genomics, population gene ...
focuses on the characterisation of
human genetic variation
Human genetic variation is the genetic differences in and among populations. There may be multiple variants of any given gene in the human population (alleles), a situation called polymorphism.
No two humans are genetically identical. Even m ...
in health and disease. Aside from the institute's contribution to the
Human Genome Project
The Human Genome Project (HGP) was an international scientific research project with the goal of determining the base pairs that make up human DNA, and of identifying, mapping and sequencing all of the genes of the human genome from both a ...
, researchers at the Sanger Institute have made contributions in various research areas relating to disease, population comparative and
evolutionary genetics
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 ...
. In January 2008, the launch of the
1000 Genomes Project
The 1000 Genomes Project (abbreviated as 1KGP), launched in January 2008, was an international research effort to establish by far the most detailed catalogue of human genetic variation. Scientists planned to sequence the genomes of at least one th ...
, a collaboration with scientists around the globe, signalled an effort to sequence the genomes of 1000 individuals in order to create the "most detailed map of human genetic variation to support disease studies". The data from the pilot projects was made freely available in public databases in June 2010. In 2010, the Sanger Institute announced its participation in the UK10K project, which will sequence the genomes of 10,000 individuals to identify rare genetic variants and their effects on human health. The Sanger Institute is also part of the
International Cancer Genome Consortium
The International Cancer Genome Consortium (ICGC) is a voluntary scientific organization that provides a forum for collaboration among the world's leading cancer and genomic researchers. The ICGC was launched in 2008 to coordinate large-scale can ...
, an international effort to describe different cancer
tumour
A neoplasm () is a type of abnormal and excessive growth of tissue. The process that occurs to form or produce a neoplasm is called neoplasia. The growth of a neoplasm is uncoordinated with that of the normal surrounding tissue, and persists ...
types. It is also part of the
GENCODE
GENCODE is a scientific project in genome research and part of the ENCODE (ENCyclopedia Of DNA Elements) scale-up project.
The GENCODE consortium was initially formed as part of the pilot phase of the ENCODE project to identify and map all prote ...
and
ENCODE
The Encyclopedia of DNA Elements (ENCODE) is a public research project which aims to identify functional elements in the human genome.
ENCODE also supports further biomedical research by "generating community resources of genomics data, software ...
research programmes to create an encyclopaedia of DNA elements.
The Programme applies genomics to population-scale studies to identify the causal variants and pathways involved in human disease and their effects on cell biology. It also models developmental disorders to explore which physical aspects might be reversible.
Pathogens and Microbes Programme
Investigates the common underpinning mechanisms of evolution, infection and resistance to therapy into bolster understanding of
bacteria
Bacteria (; singular: bacterium) are ubiquitous, mostly free-living organisms often consisting of one biological cell. They constitute a large domain of prokaryotic microorganisms. Typically a few micrometres in length, bacteria were among ...
,
virus
A virus is a submicroscopic infectious agent that replicates only inside the living cells of an organism. Viruses infect all life forms, from animals and plants to microorganisms, including bacteria and archaea.
Since Dmitri Ivanovsky's 1 ...
es and
parasites
Parasitism is a Symbiosis, close relationship between species, where one organism, the parasite, lives on or inside another organism, the Host (biology), host, causing it some harm, and is Adaptation, adapted structurally to this way of lif ...
, with a particular interest in
malaria
Malaria is a mosquito-borne infectious disease that affects humans and other animals. Malaria causes symptoms that typically include fever, tiredness, vomiting, and headaches. In severe cases, it can cause jaundice, seizures, coma, or death. S ...
. It also explores the effects of genome variation on the biology of
host
A host is a person responsible for guests at an event or for providing hospitality during it.
Host may also refer to:
Places
* Host, Pennsylvania, a village in Berks County
People
*Jim Host (born 1937), American businessman
* Michel Host ...
-
pathogen
In biology, a pathogen ( el, πάθος, "suffering", "passion" and , "producer of") in the oldest and broadest sense, is any organism or agent that can produce disease. A pathogen may also be referred to as an infectious agent, or simply a germ ...
interactions, in particular host response to infection and the role of microiotia in health and disease. All the genomes after sequencing are made available at the web-based onsite-maintained database, GeneDB.
Tree of Life Programme
The Tree of Life Programme was created in 2019 to investigate the diversity of complex organisms found in the UK through sequencing and cellular technologies. It also compares and contrasts species' genome sequences to unlock insights into evolution and conservation. This Programme will play a leading role in the Darwin Tree of Life Project, a UK-wide initiative to sequence the genomes of all 66,000 complex species (
eukaryotes
Eukaryotes () are organisms whose cells have a 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 three domains of life. Bacte ...
) in the British Isles.
Collaborations
Much of the Sanger Institute's research is carried out in partnership with the wider
scientific community
The scientific community is a diverse network of interacting scientists. It includes many " sub-communities" working on particular scientific fields, and within particular institutions; interdisciplinary and cross-institutional activities are als ...
; over 90 percent of the institute's research papers involve collaborations with other organisations. Significant collaborations include:
*
1000 Genomes Project
The 1000 Genomes Project (abbreviated as 1KGP), launched in January 2008, was an international research effort to establish by far the most detailed catalogue of human genetic variation. Scientists planned to sequence the genomes of at least one th ...
*
GENCODE
GENCODE is a scientific project in genome research and part of the ENCODE (ENCyclopedia Of DNA Elements) scale-up project.
The GENCODE consortium was initially formed as part of the pilot phase of the ENCODE project to identify and map all prote ...
and
ENCODE
The Encyclopedia of DNA Elements (ENCODE) is a public research project which aims to identify functional elements in the human genome.
ENCODE also supports further biomedical research by "generating community resources of genomics data, software ...
(ENCyclopedia Of DNA Elements)
*
International Cancer Genome Consortium
The International Cancer Genome Consortium (ICGC) is a voluntary scientific organization that provides a forum for collaboration among the world's leading cancer and genomic researchers. The ICGC was launched in 2008 to coordinate large-scale can ...
*
International HapMap Project
The International HapMap Project was an organization that aimed to develop a haplotype map (HapMap) of the human genome, to describe the common patterns of human genetic variation. HapMap is used to find genetic variants affecting health, disease a ...
*
International Knockout Mouse Consortium
The International Knockout Mouse Consortium (IKMC) is a scientific endeavour to produce a collection of mouse embryonic stem cell lines that together lack every gene in the genome, and then to distribute the cells to scientific researchers to crea ...
*
International Mouse Phenotyping Consortium
The International Mouse Phenotyping Consortium (IMPC) is an international scientific endeavour to create and characterize the phenotype of 20,000 knockout mouse strains. Launched in September 2011, the consortium consists of over 15 research insti ...
* SNP (
Single nucleotide polymorphism
In genetics, a single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP ; plural SNPs ) is a germline substitution of a single nucleotide at a specific position in the genome. Although certain definitions require the substitution to be present in a sufficiently larg ...
) Consortium
* The Copy Number Variation Project
* The
genome sequencing
Whole genome sequencing (WGS), also known as full genome sequencing, complete genome sequencing, or entire genome sequencing, is the process of determining the entirety, or nearly the entirety, of the DNA sequence of an organism's genome at a ...
of ''
S. pombe
''Schizosaccharomyces pombe'', also called "fission yeast", is a species of yeast used in traditional brewing and as a model organism in molecular and cell biology. It is a unicellular eukaryote, whose cells are rod-shaped. Cells typically meas ...
'', ''
C. elegans
''Caenorhabditis elegans'' () is a free-living transparent nematode about 1 mm in length that lives in temperate soil environments. It is the type species of its genus. The name is a blend of the Greek ''caeno-'' (recent), ''rhabditis'' (r ...
'',
mouse
A mouse ( : mice) is a small rodent. Characteristically, mice are known to have a pointed snout, small rounded ears, a body-length scaly tail, and a high breeding rate. The best known mouse species is the common house mouse (''Mus musculus' ...
and the
Malaria
Malaria is a mosquito-borne infectious disease that affects humans and other animals. Malaria causes symptoms that typically include fever, tiredness, vomiting, and headaches. In severe cases, it can cause jaundice, seizures, coma, or death. S ...
parasite.
* The
Human Genome Project
The Human Genome Project (HGP) was an international scientific research project with the goal of determining the base pairs that make up human DNA, and of identifying, mapping and sequencing all of the genes of the human genome from both a ...
* The UK 10,000 Genomes Project (UK10K)
*
Wellcome Trust
The Wellcome Trust is a charitable foundation focused on health research based in London, in the United Kingdom. It was established in 1936 with legacies from the pharmaceutical magnate Henry Wellcome (founder of one of the predecessors of Glaxo ...
-
Department of Biotechnology
The Department of Biotechnology (DBT) is an Indian government department, under the Ministry of Science and Technology responsible for administrating development and commercialisation in the field of modern biology and biotechnology in India. It ...
,
India
India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...
Alliance
Public engagement
![Sanger Institute outreach DNA bracelets](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f1/Sanger_Institute_outreach_DNA_bracelets.jpg)
The Sanger Institute has a programme of
public engagement
Public engagement or public participation is a term that has recently been used to describe "the practice of involving members of the public in the agenda-setting, decision-making, and policy-forming activities of organizations/institutions respons ...
activity. The programme aims to make complex biomedical research accessible to a range of audiences including school students and their teachers, and local community members.
The Communication and Public Engagement programme aims to "encourage informed discussion about issues relevant to Sanger Institute research"
and "foster a community of researchers who can engage effectively with different audiences".
The institute hosts visits for more than 1,500 students, teachers and community groups per year. Visitors may meet scientific staff, tour the institute and its facilities, and participate in ethical debates and activities. The programme also offers professional development sessions for teachers of
GCSE
The General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) is an academic qualification in a particular subject, taken in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland. State schools in Scotland use the Scottish Qualifications Certificate instead. Private sc ...
and post 16 science through the national network of
Science Learning Centres
Science Learning Centres are a UK government initiative to address the need for improved science education and development for teachers in England.
Origins
In 2001, a House of Lords Science & Technology Select Committee Report identified an urgen ...
, and by hosting visits for groups interested in updating their knowledge in contemporary genetics.
Videoconferencing
Videotelephony, also known as videoconferencing and video teleconferencing, is the two-way or multipoint reception and transmission of audio signal, audio and video signals by people in different locations for Real-time, real time communication. ...
into the Sanger Institute is also offered for Science Learning Centres, Science Centres and schools.
Scientific and public engagement staff also collaborate on and contribute to national projects such as the UK's ''InsideDNA'' traveling exhibition and the ''Who am I?'' gallery at
The Science Museum
The Science Museum is a major museum on Exhibition Road in South Kensington, London. It was founded in 1857 and is one of the city's major tourist attractions, attracting 3.3 million visitors annually in 2019.
Like other publicly funded ...
. They also participate in public events such as the Cambridge Science Festival.
Graduate training
The institute operates two PhD training programmes: a four-year course for basic science graduates, and a three-year course for clinicians. The four-year course requires students to rotate around three different laboratories in order to broaden their scientific horizons before choosing a PhD project. Each student is required to choose at least one experimental and one informatics-based rotation project. The institute houses approximately 50 pre-doctoral students, all of whom are registered at the
University of Cambridge
, mottoeng = Literal: From here, light and sacred draughts.
Non literal: From this place, we gain enlightenment and precious knowledge.
, established =
, other_name = The Chancellor, Masters and Schola ...
.
Officers
According to Companies House the five officers of the parent company Genome Research Limited are Henry Parkinson, Kay Elizabeth Davies, Rolf Dieter Heuer, James Cuthbert Smith, David Lindsay Willetts. According to the Sanger website Henry Parkinson is head of legal.
Staff
the Sanger employs around 900 people, and is led by
Michael Stratton. Notable scientific staff,
faculty and alumni are listed below:
Academic faculty
a faculty of 32 scientists lead
hypothesis
A hypothesis (plural hypotheses) is a proposed explanation for a phenomenon. For a hypothesis to be a scientific hypothesis, the scientific method requires that one can test it. Scientists generally base scientific hypotheses on previous obse ...
-driven research, seeking answers to biomedical questions.
Among others, these include
Dominic Kwiatkowski,
Nicole Soranzo,
Michael Stratton,
Sarah Teichmann
Sarah Amalia Teichmann (born 1975) is a German scientist who is head of cellular genetics at the Wellcome Sanger Institute and a visiting research group leader at the European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI). She serves as director of resear ...
and
Matthew Hurles
Matthew Edward Hurles is head of human genetics at the Wellcome Sanger Institute and an honorary professor of Human Genetics and Genomics at the University of Cambridge.
Education
Hurles was educated at the University of Oxford where he was aw ...
. The institute also has a number of Associate Faculty members, International Fellows and Honorary Faculty. These include
Adrian Bird
Sir Adrian Peter Bird, (born 3 July 1947) is a British geneticist and Buchanan Professor of Genetics at the University of Edinburgh. Bird has spent much of his academic career in Edinburgh, from receiving his PhD in 1970 to working at the MRC ...
,
Ewan Birney
John Frederick William Birney (known as Ewan Birney) (born 6 December 1972) is joint director of EMBL's European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI), in Hinxton, Cambridgeshire and deputy director general of the European Molecular Biology Labora ...
,
Chris Ponting,
Fiona Powrie
Dame Fiona Magaret Powrie (born 1963) is currently the head of the Kennedy Institute of Rheumatology at the University of Oxford. Formerly she was the inaugural Sidney Truelove Professor of Gastroenterology at the University of Oxford. She is a ...
,
Stephen O'Rahilly,
Antonio Vidal-Puig
Antonio Vidal-Puig (born Valencia, Spain June 12, 1962) is a Spanish medical doctor and scientist who works as a Professor of Molecular Nutrition and Metabolism at the University of Cambridge ( UK), best known for advancing the concept that ph ...
, and
Wolf Reik
Wolf Reik FRS is a German molecular biologist and a group leader at the Babraham Institute, honorary professor of Epigenetics at the University of Cambridge and associate faculty at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute. He was announced as the d ...
, among others.
Scientific advisory board
The Sanger
Board of Management
A board of directors (commonly referred simply as the board) is an executive committee that jointly supervises the activities of an organization, which can be either a for-profit or a nonprofit organization such as a business, nonprofit organiz ...
are guided by the scientific
advisory board
An advisory board is a body that provides non-binding strategic advice to the management of a corporation, organization, or foundation. The informal nature of an advisory board gives greater flexibility in structure and management compared to th ...
whose members include Professor
David Altshuler, Professor
Anton Berns, Professor
David J. Lipman, Professor Kevin Marsh and Professor Sir
Paul Nurse
Sir Paul Maxime Nurse (born 25 January 1949) is an English geneticist, former President of the Royal Society and Chief Executive and Director of the Francis Crick Institute. He was awarded the 2001 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine along ...
.
Alumni
Previous faculty members at the Sanger include:
*
Alex Bateman
Alexander George Bateman is a computational biologist and Head of Protein Sequence Resources at the European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI), part of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Cambridge, UK. He has led the development of ...
,
EMBL
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 ...
-
EBI
Ebrahim Hamedi ( fa, اِبراهیم حامدی, also Romanized as "Ebrāhim Hāmedi"; born 1949), better known by his stage name Ebi (Persian: ), is an Iranian pop singer who first started his career in Tehran, gaining fame as part of a ban ...
[ ]
*
Tim Hubbard Timothy John Phillip Hubbard is a Professor of Bioinformatics at King's College London, Head of Genome Analysis at Genomics England and Honorary Faculty at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in Cambridge, UK.
Education
Hubbard was educated at the ...
, Professor at
King's College London
King's College London (informally King's or KCL) is a public research university located in London, England. King's was established by royal charter in 1829 under the patronage of King George IV and the Duke of Wellington. In 1836, King's ...
*
Leena Peltonen-Palotie
Leena Peltonen-Palotie (16 June 1952 – 11 March 2010) was a Finnish geneticist who contributed to the identification of 15 genes for Finnish heritage diseases, including arterial hypertension, schizophrenia, lactose intolerance, arthrosis ...
(1952 – 2010)
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Julian Rayner
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Eleftheria Zeggini
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Richard Durbin FRS
History
Management
John E. Sulston
Sir John Edward Sulston (27 March 1942 – 6 March 2018) was a British biologist and academic who won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his work on the cell lineage and genome of the worm '' Caenorhabditis elegans'' in 2002 wit ...
was the founding director of the Sanger Institute. Sulston was instrumental in the choice of the Hinxton site for the institute and remained there as director until the announcement of the completion of the draft human genome in 2000. Sulston graduated from the
University of Cambridge
, mottoeng = Literal: From here, light and sacred draughts.
Non literal: From this place, we gain enlightenment and precious knowledge.
, established =
, other_name = The Chancellor, Masters and Schola ...
in 1963 and completed his PhD on the chemical synthesis of DNA in 1966. He shared the 2002
Nobel Prize
The Nobel Prizes ( ; sv, Nobelpriset ; no, Nobelprisen ) are five separate prizes that, according to Alfred Nobel's will of 1895, are awarded to "those who, during the preceding year, have conferred the greatest benefit to humankind." Alfr ...
in Physiology or Medicine with
Robert Horvitz
Howard Robert Horvitz ForMemRS NAS AAA&S APS NAM (born May 8, 1947) is an American biologist best known for his research on the nematode worm ''Caenorhabditis elegans'', for which he was awarded the 2002 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, t ...
and
Sydney Brenner
Sydney Brenner (13 January 1927 – 5 April 2019) was a South African biologist. In 2002, he shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with H. Robert Horvitz and Sir John E. Sulston. Brenner made significant contributions to work ...
, two years after standing down as director of the institute.
In 2000,
Allan Bradley left his appointment as professor at the
Baylor College of Medicine
Baylor College of Medicine (BCM) is a medical school and research center in Houston, Texas, within the Texas Medical Center, the world's largest medical center. BCM is composed of four academic components: the School of Medicine, the Graduate Sc ...
, in the US, to take up the position as director of the Sanger Institute. Bradley wanted to build on the achievements made by the Sanger Institute in the Human Genome Project by "concentrating on gene function, cancer genomics, and the genomes of model organisms such as the mouse and the zebrafish". Bradley received his BA, MA and PhD in Genetics from the University of Cambridge.
In 2010, Bradley stepped down from his leadership role to form a
startup company
A startup or start-up is a company or project undertaken by an entrepreneur to seek, develop, and validate a scalable business model. While entrepreneurship refers to all new businesses, including self-employment and businesses that never intend t ...
, but remains on the faculty of the institute as director emeritus.
Mike Stratton
David Michael Stratton (April 10, 1941 – March 25, 2020) was an American professional football player who was a linebacker for 12 seasons in the American Football League (AFL) and National Football League (NFL). He won two AFL championships ...
, who is a leader of the
Cancer Genome Project
The Cancer Genome Project is part of the cancer, aging, and somatic mutation research based at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in The United Kingdom. It aims to identify sequence variants/mutations critical in the development of human cancers. ...
and the
International Cancer Genome Consortium
The International Cancer Genome Consortium (ICGC) is a voluntary scientific organization that provides a forum for collaboration among the world's leading cancer and genomic researchers. The ICGC was launched in 2008 to coordinate large-scale can ...
, was appointed director of the Sanger Institute in May of that year.
Human Genome Project
The Sanger Institute was opened in 1993, three years after the inception of the
Human Genome Project
The Human Genome Project (HGP) was an international scientific research project with the goal of determining the base pairs that make up human DNA, and of identifying, mapping and sequencing all of the genes of the human genome from both a ...
, and went on to make the largest single contribution to the gold standard sequence of the
human genome
The human genome is a complete set of nucleic acid sequences for humans, encoded as DNA within the 23 chromosome pairs in cell nuclei and in a small DNA molecule found within individual mitochondria. These are usually treated separately as the n ...
, published in 2004. The institute was engaged in collaborations to sequence 8 of the 23 human pairs of
chromosomes
A chromosome is a long DNA molecule with part or all of the genetic material of an organism. In most chromosomes the very long thin DNA fibers are coated with packaging proteins; in eukaryotic cells the most important of these proteins are ...
(
1,
6,
9,
10,
13,
20,
22, and
X). Since the publishing of the human genome, research carried out at the institute has developed beyond sequencing of organisms into various biomedical research areas, including studies into diseases such as cancer, malaria and diabetes.
Controversy
In August 2018 it was reported that an investigation was under way into allegations of bullying of staff and gender discrimination made against senior management of the
Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute
The Wellcome Sanger Institute, previously known as The Sanger Centre and Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, is a non-profit British genomics and genetics research institute, primarily funded by the Wellcome Trust.
It is located on the Wellcome G ...
, including the director. The investigation, carried out by the barrister Thomas Kibling from
Matrix Chambers
Matrix Chambers is a barristers' chambers in Gray's Inn London, Brussels, and Geneva. Founded in April 2000 by 22 barristers from 7 different chambers, it now has over 90 independent and specialist lawyers who work throughout the UK and interna ...
, concluded in October 2018 and cleared Stratton of any wrongdoing, while listing areas for improvement in the workings of the Sanger Institute. The findings and the independence of the investigation were disputed.
In October 2019 it was reported that the institute had manufactured a medical tool with the intent of monetising it despite not having ethical nor legal approval to do so and having been made aware by
Stellenbosch University
Stellenbosch University ( af, Universiteit Stellenbosch) is a public research university situated in Stellenbosch, a town in the Western Cape province of South Africa. Stellenbosch is the oldest university in South Africa and the oldest extant ...
and internal whistleblowers.
References
External links
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Partner institutions of the University of Cambridge
Genetic engineering in the United Kingdom
Genetics or genomics research institutions
Research institutes in Cambridgeshire
South Cambridgeshire District
Wellcome Trust