David Botstein (born September 8, 1942) is an American biologist serving as the chief scientific officer of

Calico Calico (; in British usage since 1505) is a heavy plain-woven textile made from unbleached, and often not fully processed, cotton. It may also contain unseparated husk parts. The fabric is far coarser than muslin, but less coarse and thick than ...

. He served as the director of the Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics at

Princeton University Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the ...

from 2003 to 2013, where he remains an Anthony B. Evnin Professor of Genomics.

Education

Botstein graduated from the

Bronx High School of Science The Bronx High School of Science, commonly called Bronx Science, is a public specialized high school in The Bronx in New York City. It is operated by the New York City Department of Education. Admission to Bronx Science involves passing the Sp ...

in 1959, and

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of highe ...

in 1963. He started his Ph.D. work under

Maurice Sanford Fox Maurice Sanford Fox (October 11, 1924 – January 26, 2020) was an American geneticist and molecular biologist, and professor of biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he served as department chair between 1985 and 19 ...

at the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of th ...

, then moved and received a Ph.D. from the

University of Michigan , mottoeng = "Arts, Knowledge, Truth" , former_names = Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania (1817–1821) , budget = $10.3 billion (2021) , endowment = $17 billion (2021)As o ...

in 1967 for work on

P22 phage ''Salmonella virus P22'' is a bacteriophage in the ''Podoviridae'' family that infects '' Salmonella typhimurium''. Like many phages, it has been used in molecular biology to induce mutations in cultured bacteria and to introduce foreign gen ...

Career

Botstein taught at the

, where he became a professor of genetics. Botstein joined

Genentech Genentech, Inc., is an American biotechnology corporation headquartered in South San Francisco, California. It became an independent subsidiary of Roche in 2009. Genentech Research and Early Development operates as an independent center within ...

, Inc. in 1987 as vice president – science. In 1990, he became chairman of the Department of Genetics at

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is conside ...

. Botstein was elected to the

U.S. National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the Natio ...

in 1981 and to the

Institute of Medicine The National Academy of Medicine (NAM), formerly called the Institute of Medicine (IoM) until 2015, is an American nonprofit, non-governmental organization. The National Academy of Medicine is a part of the National Academies of Sciences, Eng ...

in 1993. Botstein is the director of the Integrated Science Program at

. Many Integrated Science students have gone on to be successful in the field of

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 phys ...

. In 1980, Botstein and his colleagues Ray White, Mark Skolnick, and Ronald W. Davis proposed a method for constructing a

genetic linkage Genetic linkage is the tendency of DNA sequences that are close together on a chromosome to be inherited together during the meiosis phase of sexual reproduction. Two genetic markers that are physically near to each other are unlikely to be sep ...

map using restriction fragment length polymorphisms that was used in subsequent years to identify several human disease genes including

Huntington's Huntington's disease (HD), also known as Huntington's chorea, is a neurodegenerative disease that is mostly inherited. The earliest symptoms are often subtle problems with mood or mental abilities. A general lack of coordination and an unst ...

and

BRCA1 Breast cancer type 1 susceptibility protein is a protein that in humans is encoded by the ''BRCA1'' () gene. Orthologs are common in other vertebrate species, whereas invertebrate genomes may encode a more distantly related gene. ''BRCA1'' is a ...

. Variations of this method were used in the mapping efforts that predated and enabled the sequencing phase 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 ...

. In 1998, Botstein and his postdoctoral fellow Michael Eisen, together with graduate student Paul Spellman and colleague Patrick Brown, developed a statistical method and graphical interface that is widely used to interpret genomic data including

microarray A microarray is a multiplex lab-on-a-chip. Its purpose is to simultaneously detect the expression of thousands of genes from a sample (e.g. from a tissue). It is a two-dimensional array on a solid substrate—usually a glass slide or silicon ...

data. This approach was refined and applied for diverse applications, including for a molecular classification of heterogenous tumors using gene expression. These efforts included work on discovery of tumor subtypes with Lou Staudt, Ash Alizadeh and Ronald Levy, yielding a refined classification of diffuse large B cell lymphomas, and in painting the molecular portraits for refined classification of breast cancers with Anne-Lise Børresen-Dale and Charles Perou. He has subsequently worked on the creation of the influential

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 ...

with

Michael Ashburner Michael Ashburner (born 23 May 1942) is a biologist and Emeritus Professor in the Department of Genetics at University of Cambridge. He is also the former joint-head and co-founder of the European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI) of the European Mol ...

and

Suzanna Lewis Suzanna (Suzi) E. Lewis was a scientist and Principal investigator at the Berkeley Bioinformatics Open-source Project based at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory until her retirement in 2019. Lewis led the development of open standards and soft ...

. He is one of the founding editors of the journal '' Molecular Biology of the Cell'', along with Erkki Ruoslahti and Keith Yamamoto. In 2013, Botstein was named chief scientific officer of

Google Google LLC () is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company focusing on Search Engine, search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, software, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, ar ...

's anti-aging health startup

Awards

Botstein has won the Eli Lilly and Company Award in Microbiology (1978), the Genetics Society of America Medal (1988, with

Ira Herskowitz Ira Herskowitz (July 14, 1946 – April 28, 2003) was an American phage and yeast geneticist geneticist who studied genetic regulatory circuits and mechanisms. He was particularly noted for his work on mating type switching and cellular differenti ...

), the Allan Award of the

American Society of Human Genetics The American Society of Human Genetics (ASHG), founded in 1948, is a professional membership organization for specialists in human genetics. As of 2009, the organization had approximately 8,000 members. The Society's members include researchers, a ...

(1989, with

Ray White Ray White (full name Ray Shirley White Sr) is an American soul vocalist and rock and blues guitarist, best known as a member of Frank Zappa's touring ensembles. He was drafted into Zappa's band in late 1976, being featured on rhythm gu ...

), the

Gruber Prize in Genetics The Gruber Prize in Genetics, established in 2001, is one of three international awards worth US$500,000 made by the Gruber Foundation, a non-profit organization based at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. The Genetics Prize honors leadi ...

(2003), the

Albany Medical Center Prize The Albany Medical Center Prize in Medicine and Biomedical Research is the United States' second highest value prize in medicine and biomedical research, awarded by the Albany Medical Center. Among prizes for medicine worldwide, the Albany Medical ...

(2010, with

Eric Lander Eric Steven Lander (born February 3, 1957) is an American mathematician and geneticist who served as the 11th director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy and Science Advisor to the President, serving on the presidential Cabinet. ...

and

Francis Collins Francis Sellers Collins (born April 14, 1950) is an American physician-geneticist who discovered the genes associated with a number of diseases and led the Human Genome Project. He is the former director of the National Institutes of Health (N ...

) and the

Dan David Prize The Dan David Prize is a major international award that recognizes and supports outstanding contributions to the study of history and other disciplines that shed light on the human past. It awards nine prizes of $300,000 each year to outstanding ...

in 2012. In 2013 he was awarded the $3 million

Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences The Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences is a scientific award, funded by internet entrepreneurs Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan of Facebook; Sergey Brin of Google; entrepreneur and venture capitalist Yuri Milner; and Anne Wojcicki, one of the ...

for his work and in 2020 the

Thomas Hunt Morgan Medal The Thomas Hunt Morgan Medal is awarded by the Genetics Society of America (GSA) for lifetime contributions to the field of genetics. The medal is named after Thomas Hunt Morgan, the 1933 Nobel Prize winner, who received this award for his work wi ...

of the

Genetics Society of America The Genetics Society of America (GSA) is a scholarly membership society of more than 5,500 genetics researchers and educators, established in 1931. The Society was formed from the reorganization of the Joint Genetics Sections of the American Soci ...

. In 2016,

Semantic Scholar Semantic Scholar is an artificial intelligence–powered research tool for scientific literature developed at the Allen Institute for AI and publicly released in November 2015. It uses advances in natural language processing to provide summaries ...

AI program included Botstein on its list of most top ten most influential biomedical researchers.

Personal

Botstein is an alumnus of Camp Rising Sun. He is the brother of the conductor

Leon Botstein Leon Botstein (born December 14, 1946 in Zürich, Switzerland) is a Swiss-American conducting, conductor, educator, and scholar serving as the President of Bard College. Biography 1946–1975: Early life, education, and career Botstein was ...

. Both of Botstein's parents were physicians.

References

External links

David Botstein's Talk: "An Integrated Science Curriculum"David Botstein iBiology Seminar: "Fruits of the Genome Sequence"

David Botstein personal archives
MC-0227. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Distinctive Collections, Cambridge, Massachusetts. {{DEFAULTSORT:Botstein, David 1942 births The Bronx High School of Science alumni Living people Harvard University alumni University of Michigan alumni Camp Rising Sun alumni American geneticists Jewish American scientists 20th-century Swiss people Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences Genentech people Stanford University School of Medicine faculty American biotechnologists Biogerontologists Princeton University faculty Stanford University faculty Academic journal editors American print editors Media founders American microbiologists Fellows of the AACR Academy Scientists from New York (state) American scientists Fellows of the American Academy of Microbiology 21st-century American Jews Members of the National Academy of Medicine