1.
Fellow of the Royal Society
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As of 2016, there are around 1600 living Fellows, Foreign and Honorary Members. Fellowship of the Royal Society has been described by The Guardian newspaper as “the equivalent of a lifetime achievement Oscar” with several institutions celebrating their announcement each year. Up to 60 new Fellows, honorary and foreign members are elected annually usually in May, each candidate is considered on their merits and can be proposed from any sector of the scientific community. Fellows are elected for life on the basis of excellence in science and are entitled to use the post-nominal letters FRS, see Category, Fellows of the Royal Society and Category, Female Fellows of the Royal Society. Every year, Fellows elect up to ten new Foreign Members, like Fellows, Foreign Members are elected for life through peer review on the basis of excellence in science. As of 2016 there are around 165 Foreign Members, who are entitled to use the post-nominal ForMemRS, see Category, Foreign Members of the Royal Society. Honorary Fellows include Bill Bryson, Melvyn Bragg, Robin Saxby, David Sainsbury, Baron Sainsbury of Turville, Honorary Fellows are entitled to use the post nominal letters HonFRS. Others including John Maddox, Patrick Moore and Lisa Jardine were elected as honorary fellows, statute 12 is a legacy mechanism for electing members before official honorary membership existed in 1997. Fellows elected under statute 12 include David Attenborough and John Palmer, prime Ministers of the United Kingdom such as Margaret Thatcher, Neville Chamberlain, H. H. Asquith were elected under statute 12, see Category, Fellows of the Royal Society. The Council of the Royal Society can recommend members of the British Royal Family for election as Royal Fellows of the Royal Society. As of 2016 there are five royal fellows, Charles, Prince of Wales, Anne, Princess Royal, Prince Edward, Duke of Kent, Prince William, Duke of Cambridge and Prince Andrew, Duke of York. Her Majesty the Queen, Elizabeth II is not a Royal Fellow, Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh was elected under statute 12, not as a Royal Fellow. The election of new fellows is announced annually in May, after their nomination, each candidate for Fellowship or Foreign Membership is nominated by two Fellows of the Royal Society, who sign a certificate of proposal. Previously, nominations required at least five fellows to support each nomination by the proposer, the certificate of election includes a statement of the principal grounds on which the proposal is being made. There is no limit on the number of nominations each year. In 2015, there were 654 candidates for election as Fellows and 106 candidates for Foreign Membership. The final list of up to 52 Fellowship candidates and up to 10 Foreign Membership candidates is confirmed by the Council in April, a candidate is elected if he or she secures two-thirds of votes of those Fellows present and voting. A further maximum of six can be ‘Honorary’, ‘General’ or ‘Royal’ Fellows, nominations for Fellowship are peer reviewed by sectional committees, each with fifteen members and a chair
2.
England
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England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west, the Irish Sea lies northwest of England and the Celtic Sea lies to the southwest. England is separated from continental Europe by the North Sea to the east, the country covers five-eighths of the island of Great Britain in its centre and south, and includes over 100 smaller islands such as the Isles of Scilly, and the Isle of Wight. England became a state in the 10th century, and since the Age of Discovery. The Industrial Revolution began in 18th-century England, transforming its society into the worlds first industrialised nation, Englands terrain mostly comprises low hills and plains, especially in central and southern England. However, there are uplands in the north and in the southwest, the capital is London, which is the largest metropolitan area in both the United Kingdom and the European Union. In 1801, Great Britain was united with the Kingdom of Ireland through another Act of Union to become the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. In 1922 the Irish Free State seceded from the United Kingdom, leading to the latter being renamed the United Kingdom of Great Britain, the name England is derived from the Old English name Englaland, which means land of the Angles. The Angles were one of the Germanic tribes that settled in Great Britain during the Early Middle Ages, the Angles came from the Angeln peninsula in the Bay of Kiel area of the Baltic Sea. The earliest recorded use of the term, as Engla londe, is in the ninth century translation into Old English of Bedes Ecclesiastical History of the English People. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, its spelling was first used in 1538. The earliest attested reference to the Angles occurs in the 1st-century work by Tacitus, Germania, the etymology of the tribal name itself is disputed by scholars, it has been suggested that it derives from the shape of the Angeln peninsula, an angular shape. An alternative name for England is Albion, the name Albion originally referred to the entire island of Great Britain. The nominally earliest record of the name appears in the Aristotelian Corpus, specifically the 4th century BC De Mundo, in it are two very large islands called Britannia, these are Albion and Ierne. But modern scholarly consensus ascribes De Mundo not to Aristotle but to Pseudo-Aristotle, the word Albion or insula Albionum has two possible origins. Albion is now applied to England in a poetic capacity. Another romantic name for England is Loegria, related to the Welsh word for England, Lloegr, the earliest known evidence of human presence in the area now known as England was that of Homo antecessor, dating to approximately 780,000 years ago. The oldest proto-human bones discovered in England date from 500,000 years ago, Modern humans are known to have inhabited the area during the Upper Paleolithic period, though permanent settlements were only established within the last 6,000 years
3.
English people
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The English are a nation and an ethnic group native to England, who speak the English language. The English identity is of medieval origin, when they were known in Old English as the Angelcynn. Their ethnonym is derived from the Angles, one of the Germanic peoples who migrated to Great Britain around the 5th century AD, England is one of the countries of the United Kingdom. Collectively known as the Anglo-Saxons, they founded what was to become England along with the later Danes, Normans, in the Acts of Union 1707, the Kingdom of England was succeeded by the Kingdom of Great Britain. Over the years, English customs and identity have become closely aligned with British customs. The English people are the source of the English language, the Westminster system and these and other English cultural characteristics have spread worldwide, in part as a result of the former British Empire. The concept of an English nation is far older than that of the British nation, many recent immigrants to England have assumed a solely British identity, while others have developed dual or mixed identities. Use of the word English to describe Britons from ethnic minorities in England is complicated by most non-white people in England identifying as British rather than English. In their 2004 Annual Population Survey, the Office for National Statistics compared the ethnic identities of British people with their national identity. They found that while 58% of white people in England described their nationality as English and it is unclear how many British people consider themselves English. Following complaints about this, the 2011 census was changed to allow respondents to record their English, Welsh, Scottish, another complication in defining the English is a common tendency for the words English and British to be used interchangeably, especially overseas. In his study of English identity, Krishan Kumar describes a common slip of the tongue in which people say English, I mean British. He notes that this slip is made only by the English themselves and by foreigners. Kumar suggests that although this blurring is a sign of Englands dominant position with the UK and it tells of the difficulty that most English people have of distinguishing themselves, in a collective way, from the other inhabitants of the British Isles. In 1965, the historian A. J. P. Taylor wrote, When the Oxford History of England was launched a generation ago and it meant indiscriminately England and Wales, Great Britain, the United Kingdom, and even the British Empire. Foreigners used it as the name of a Great Power and indeed continue to do so, bonar Law, by origin a Scotch Canadian, was not ashamed to describe himself as Prime Minister of England Now terms have become more rigorous. The use of England except for a geographic area brings protests and this version of history is now regarded by many historians as incorrect, on the basis of more recent genetic and archaeological research. The 2016 study authored by Stephan Schiffels et al, the remaining portion of English DNA is primarily French, introduced in a migration after the end of the Ice Age
4.
United Kingdom
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The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom or Britain, is a sovereign country in western Europe. Lying off the north-western coast of the European mainland, the United Kingdom includes the island of Great Britain, Northern Ireland is the only part of the United Kingdom that shares a land border with another sovereign state—the Republic of Ireland. The Irish Sea lies between Great Britain and Ireland, with an area of 242,500 square kilometres, the United Kingdom is the 78th-largest sovereign state in the world and the 11th-largest in Europe. It is also the 21st-most populous country, with an estimated 65.1 million inhabitants, together, this makes it the fourth-most densely populated country in the European Union. The United Kingdom is a monarchy with a parliamentary system of governance. The monarch is Queen Elizabeth II, who has reigned since 6 February 1952, other major urban areas in the United Kingdom include the regions of Birmingham, Leeds, Glasgow, Liverpool and Manchester. The United Kingdom consists of four countries—England, Scotland, Wales, the last three have devolved administrations, each with varying powers, based in their capitals, Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast, respectively. The relationships among the countries of the UK have changed over time, Wales was annexed by the Kingdom of England under the Laws in Wales Acts 1535 and 1542. A treaty between England and Scotland resulted in 1707 in a unified Kingdom of Great Britain, which merged in 1801 with the Kingdom of Ireland to form the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Five-sixths of Ireland seceded from the UK in 1922, leaving the present formulation of the United Kingdom of Great Britain, there are fourteen British Overseas Territories. These are the remnants of the British Empire which, at its height in the 1920s, British influence can be observed in the language, culture and legal systems of many of its former colonies. The United Kingdom is a country and has the worlds fifth-largest economy by nominal GDP. The UK is considered to have an economy and is categorised as very high in the Human Development Index. It was the worlds first industrialised country and the worlds foremost power during the 19th, the UK remains a great power with considerable economic, cultural, military, scientific and political influence internationally. It is a nuclear weapons state and its military expenditure ranks fourth or fifth in the world. The UK has been a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council since its first session in 1946 and it has been a leading member state of the EU and its predecessor, the European Economic Community, since 1973. However, on 23 June 2016, a referendum on the UKs membership of the EU resulted in a decision to leave. The Acts of Union 1800 united the Kingdom of Great Britain, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have devolved self-government
5.
Merchant Taylors' School, Northwood
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Merchant Taylors School is a British independent private day school for boys, originally located in the City of London. Since 1933 it has located on 285 acres of grounds at Sandy Lodge in the Three Rivers district of Hertfordshire. Today the school caters for 872 students between the ages of 3 and 18, the school is now an all-through school from age 3 to 18 after merger with Northwood Prep School, Northwood in September 2015. The school was founded in 1551 by Thomas White of the Merchant Taylors Company and it was originally located in a manor house called the Manor of the Rose, in the parish of St. Lawrence Pountney in the City of London, where it remained until 1875. Merchant Taylors was not the first school to be founded by members of the Merchant Taylors Company, Sir John Percival established a grammar school at Macclesfield in 1502, while in 1508 his widow founded one at St. Marys Wike in Cornwall. Also in 1508, Sir Steven Jenyns founded Wolverhampton Grammar School, many of the earlier Tudor schools were attached to monasteries and were dissolved after 1535 by Henry VIII and his son Edward VI. They re-emerged after 1550, some of them bearing Edwards name as founder, MTS missed these turbulent times as it was founded a few years later, during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. The first Head Master, Richard Mulcaster, took up his post in 1561 and his educational philosophy is embodied in two books, The Positions and The Elementarie, the latter an instalment of a larger work and one of the first dictionaries in English. One of his first pupils was Edmund Spenser and his goal was that English as a language might claim its place side by side with Latin, I love Rome, but London better, I favour Italy, but England more, I honour Latin, but worship English. Mulcasters views were ahead of his time, he advocated the importance to children of relaxation and games, and he wished that schools were planted in the suburbs of towns near to the fields. He was also tooth and nail for womankind in matters of education and he believed that education should fit women for their appropriate station. The successive outbreaks of plague in 1592,1603,1626,1630,1637 and 1666, had an effect on the School. The School was obliged to break up during these periods, losing pupils, in 1626 the headmaster Nicholas Gray complained of the loss of pupils and was given £20 to keep the school going, in 1630 he was given £40. Many parents kept their sons away from school, and boarders were summoned home, the School was closed for at least a year in 1636 and 1637, with no new boys admitted until the contagion abated. The outbreak of 1666 was curtailed by the Great Fire of London and it was rebuilt by 1675, after classes had met in temporary quarters for years. In 1606 Robert Dow, a member of the Company, instigated the process of probation or inspection, Dow was concerned that the school was not meeting the challenge of being one of the great schools of the time and needed regular inspection to maintain and raise its standards. The Court appointed a committee to investigate and concluded, The probation was imposed without consultation with the schoolmasters, during the probation, the headmaster was required to open his copy of Cicero at random and read out a passage to the sixth form. The boys had to copy the passage from dictation and then translate it, first into English, then into Greek, after this, they had to write a passage of Latin and some verses on some topic chosen for the day
6.
Whole genome sequencing
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Whole genome sequencing is the process of determining the complete DNA sequence of an organisms genome at a single time. This entails sequencing all of an organisms chromosomal DNA as well as DNA contained in the mitochondria and, for plants, whole genome sequencing has largely been used as a research tool, but is currently being introduced to clinics. In the future of personalized medicine, whole genome sequence data will be an important tool to guide therapeutic intervention, in addition, whole genome sequencing should not be confused with methods that sequence specific subsets of the genome - such methods include whole exome sequencing or SNP genotyping. Almost all truly complete genomes are of microbes, the full genome is thus sometimes used loosely to mean greater than 95%. The remainder of this focuses on nearly complete human genomes. The DNA sequencing methods used in the 1970s and 1980s were manual, for example Maxam-Gilbert sequencing, the shift to more rapid, automated sequencing methods in the 1990s finally allowed the sequence of whole genomes. The first organism to have its genome sequenced was Haemophilus influenzae in 1995. After it, the genomes of bacteria and some archaea were first sequenced. H. influenzae has a genome of 1,830,140 base pairs of DNA, in contrast, eukaryotes, both unicellular and multicellular such as Amoeba dubia and humans respectively, have much larger genomes. Amoeba dubia has a genome of 700 billion nucleotide pairs spread across thousands of chromosomes, humans contain fewer nucleotide pairs than A. dubia however their genome size far outweighs the genome size of individual bacteria. The first bacterial and archaeal genomes, including that of H. influenzae, were sequenced by Shotgun sequencing, in 1996 the first eukaryotic genome was sequenced. S. cerevisiae, an organism in biology has a genome of only around 12 million nucleotide pairs. The first multicellular eukaryote, and animal, to have its genome sequenced was the nematode worm. In 1999, the entire DNA sequence of human chromosome 22, by the year 2000, the second animal and second invertebrate genome was sequenced - that of the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster - a popular choice of model organism in experimental research. The first plant genome - that of the model organism Arabidopsis thaliana - was also fully sequenced by 2000, by 2001, a draft of the entire human genome sequence was published. The genome of the laboratory mouse Mus musculus was completed in 2002, in 2004, the Human Genome Project published the human genome. Currently, thousands of genomes have been sequenced, almost any biological sample containing a full copy of the DNA—even a very small amount of DNA or ancient DNA—can provide the genetic material necessary for full genome sequencing. Such samples may include saliva, epithelial cells, bone marrow, hair, seeds, plant leaves, the genome sequence of a single cell selected from a mixed population of cells can be determined using techniques of single cell genome sequencing
7.
Apoptosis
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Apoptosis is a process of programmed cell death that occurs in multicellular organisms. Biochemical events lead to characteristic cell changes and death and these changes include blebbing, cell shrinkage, nuclear fragmentation, chromatin condensation, chromosomal DNA fragmentation, and global mRNA decay. Between 50 and 70 billion cells die each day due to apoptosis in the human adult. For an average child between the ages of 8 and 14, approximately 20 billion to 30 billion cells die a day, for example, the separation of fingers and toes in a developing human embryo occurs because cells between the digits undergo apoptosis. Because apoptosis cannot stop once it has begun, it is a regulated process. Apoptosis can be initiated through one of two pathways, in the intrinsic pathway the cell kills itself because it senses cell stress, while in the extrinsic pathway the cell kills itself because of signals from other cells. Both pathways induce cell death by activating caspases, which are proteases, the two pathways both activate initiator caspases, which then activate executioner caspases, which then kill the cell by degrading proteins indiscriminately. Research on apoptosis has increased substantially since the early 1990s, in addition to its importance as a biological phenomenon, defective apoptotic processes have been implicated in a wide variety of diseases. Excessive apoptosis causes atrophy, whereas an insufficient amount results in uncontrolled cell proliferation, some factors like Fas receptors and caspases promote apoptosis, while some members of the Bcl-2 family of proteins inhibit apoptosis. German scientist Karl Vogt was first to describe the principle of apoptosis in 1842, in 1885, anatomist Walther Flemming delivered a more precise description of the process of programmed cell death. However, it was not until 1965 that the topic was resurrected, while studying tissues using electron microscopy, John Foxton Ross Kerr at University of Queensland was able to distinguish apoptosis from traumatic cell death. Following the publication of a paper describing the phenomenon, Kerr was invited to join Alastair R Currie, as well as Andrew Wyllie, in 1972, the trio published a seminal article in the British Journal of Cancer. Kerr had initially used the term programmed cell necrosis, but in the article, Kerr, Wyllie and Currie credited James Cormack, a professor of Greek language at University of Aberdeen, with suggesting the term apoptosis. Kerr received the Paul Ehrlich and Ludwig Darmstaedter Prize on March 14,2000 and he shared the prize with Boston biologist H. Robert Horvitz. For many years, the apoptosis and programmed cell death were not highly cited. The 2002 Nobel Prize in Medicine was awarded to Sydney Brenner, Horvitz, the genes were identified by studies in the nematode C. elegans and homologues of these genes function in humans to regulate apoptosis. In Greek, apoptosis translates to the falling off of leaves from a tree, Cormack, professor of Greek language, reintroduced the term for medical use as it had a medical meaning for the Greeks over two thousand years before. Hippocrates used the term to mean the falling off of the bones, galen extended its meaning to the dropping of the scabs
8.
Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine
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The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, administered by the Nobel Foundation, is awarded once a year for outstanding discoveries in the fields of life sciences and medicine. It is one of five Nobel Prizes established in 1895 by Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel, Nobel was personally interested in experimental physiology and wanted to establish a prize for progress through scientific discoveries in laboratories. The Nobel Prize is presented to the recipient at a ceremony on 10 December, the anniversary of Nobels death, along with a diploma. The front side of the medal provides the profile of Alfred Nobel as depicted on the medals for Physics, Chemistry. As of 2015,106 Nobel Prizes in Physiology or Medicine have been awarded to 198 men and 12 women. The first Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded in 1901 to the German physiologist Emil von Behring, for his work on serum therapy and this includes one to António Egas Moniz in 1949 for the prefrontal leucotomy, bestowed despite protests from the medical establishment. Other controversies resulted from disagreements over who was included in the award, the 1952 prize to Selman Waksman was litigated in court, and half the patent rights awarded to his co-discoverer Albert Schatz who was not recognized by the prize. The 1962 prize awarded to James D, since the Nobel Prize rules forbid nominations of the deceased, longevity is an asset, one prize being awarded as long as 50 years after the discovery. Alfred Nobel was born on 21 October 1833 in Stockholm, Sweden into a family of engineers and he was a chemist, engineer and inventor who amassed a fortune during his lifetime, most of it from his 355 inventions of which dynamite is the most famous. He was interested in experimental physiology and set up his own labs in France, in 1888, Nobel was surprised to read his own obituary, titled The merchant of death is dead, in a French newspaper. Though Nobel wrote several wills during his lifetime, the last was written a little over a year before he died at the age of 63, because his will was contested, it was not approved by the Storting until 26 April 1897. After Nobels death, the Nobel Foundation was set up to manage the assets of the bequest, in 1900, the Nobel Foundations newly created statutes were promulgated by Swedish King Oscar II. According to Nobels will, the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden, a medical school, today, the prize is commonly referred to as the Nobel Prize in Medicine. It was important to Nobel that the prize be awarded for a discovery, per the provisions of the will, only select persons are eligible to nominate individuals for the award. Past Nobel laureates may also nominate, until 1977, all professors of Karolinska Institutet together decided on the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Therefore, the Nobel Assembly was constituted, consisting of 50 professors at Karolinska Institutet. It elects the Nobel Committee with 5 members who evaluate the nominees, the Secretary who is in charge of the organization, in 1968, a provision was added that no more than three persons may share a Nobel prize. True to its mandate, the Committee has selected researchers working in the sciences over those who have made applied contributions
9.
Chemistry
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Chemistry is a branch of physical science that studies the composition, structure, properties and change of matter. Chemistry is sometimes called the science because it bridges other natural sciences, including physics. For the differences between chemistry and physics see comparison of chemistry and physics, the history of chemistry can be traced to alchemy, which had been practiced for several millennia in various parts of the world. The word chemistry comes from alchemy, which referred to a set of practices that encompassed elements of chemistry, metallurgy, philosophy, astrology, astronomy, mysticism. An alchemist was called a chemist in popular speech, and later the suffix -ry was added to this to describe the art of the chemist as chemistry, the modern word alchemy in turn is derived from the Arabic word al-kīmīā. In origin, the term is borrowed from the Greek χημία or χημεία and this may have Egyptian origins since al-kīmīā is derived from the Greek χημία, which is in turn derived from the word Chemi or Kimi, which is the ancient name of Egypt in Egyptian. Alternately, al-kīmīā may derive from χημεία, meaning cast together, in retrospect, the definition of chemistry has changed over time, as new discoveries and theories add to the functionality of the science. The term chymistry, in the view of noted scientist Robert Boyle in 1661, in 1837, Jean-Baptiste Dumas considered the word chemistry to refer to the science concerned with the laws and effects of molecular forces. More recently, in 1998, Professor Raymond Chang broadened the definition of chemistry to mean the study of matter, early civilizations, such as the Egyptians Babylonians, Indians amassed practical knowledge concerning the arts of metallurgy, pottery and dyes, but didnt develop a systematic theory. Greek atomism dates back to 440 BC, arising in works by such as Democritus and Epicurus. In 50 BC, the Roman philosopher Lucretius expanded upon the theory in his book De rerum natura, unlike modern concepts of science, Greek atomism was purely philosophical in nature, with little concern for empirical observations and no concern for chemical experiments. Work, particularly the development of distillation, continued in the early Byzantine period with the most famous practitioner being the 4th century Greek-Egyptian Zosimos of Panopolis. He formulated Boyles law, rejected the four elements and proposed a mechanistic alternative of atoms. Before his work, though, many important discoveries had been made, the Scottish chemist Joseph Black and the Dutchman J. B. English scientist John Dalton proposed the theory of atoms, that all substances are composed of indivisible atoms of matter. Davy discovered nine new elements including the alkali metals by extracting them from their oxides with electric current, british William Prout first proposed ordering all the elements by their atomic weight as all atoms had a weight that was an exact multiple of the atomic weight of hydrogen. The inert gases, later called the noble gases were discovered by William Ramsay in collaboration with Lord Rayleigh at the end of the century, thereby filling in the basic structure of the table. Organic chemistry was developed by Justus von Liebig and others, following Friedrich Wöhlers synthesis of urea which proved that organisms were, in theory
10.
Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute
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The Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, previously known as The Sanger Centre, is a non-profit British genomics and genetics research institute, primarily funded by the Wellcome Trust. It is located on the Wellcome Trust Genome Campus by the village of Hinxton and it shares this location with the European Bioinformatics Institute. It was established in 1992 as The Sanger Centre, named after double Nobel Laureate, from its inception the Institute established and has maintained a policy of data sharing, and does much of its research in collaboration. Since 2000, the Institute expanded its mission to understand the role of genetics in health, the Institute now employs around 900 people and engages in four main areas of research, Human genetics, pathogen genetics, mouse and zebrafish genetics and bioinformatics. In 1993 the then 17 Sanger Institute staff moved into laboratory space at Hinxton Hall in Cambridgeshire. This 55-acre site was to become the Wellcome Trust Genome Campus, the Genome Campus also includes the Wellcome Trust Conference Centre and the European Bioinformatics Institute. A major extension of the campus was opened in 2005, the buildings accommodate new laboratories. In discussing the name of the centre, Sanger told John Sulston, the founding director, Sulston commented, I rather wished I hadn’t asked. The Sanger Institutes 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 humans, vertebrate species and pathogens, at an ever increasing pace. 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. Bioinformatic databases resources are one of the outcomes of research programmes that the Sanger Institute is involved in, the Institute engages in several areas of research, The hall Institutes research in human genetics focuses on the characterisation of human genetic variation in health and disease. The data from the projects was made freely available in public databases in June 2010. The Sanger Institute is also part of the International Cancer Genome Consortium and it is also part of the GENCODE and ENCODE research programmes to create an encyclopaedia of DNA elements. Projects include the study of development, cancer, hearing and behaviour, the Institute carries out research in pathogen genetics to bolster understanding of the effects of genome variation on the biology of host-pathogen interactions. Research is underway at the Sanger Institute into the genomes of pathogens including many bacteria, the Pathogen Sequencing Advisory Group considers proposals or suggestions for sequencing of any genome of particular importance. All the genomes after sequencing are made available at the web-based onsite-maintained database, the Sanger Institutes bioinformatics teams have developed IT systems for sequencing and postgenomic research. The Institute houses genome resources, RNA, protein and other family resources, researchers worldwide are able to use these resources to make inferences of genomic knowledge through computational analysis and integration of data
11.
Salk Institute for Biological Studies
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The Salk Institute for Biological Studies is an independent, non-profit, scientific research institute located in La Jolla, San Diego, California, United States. It was founded in 1960 by Jonas Salk, the developer of the vaccine, among the founding consultants were Jacob Bronowski. Building did not start until spring of 1962, the institute consistently ranks among the top institutions in the US in terms of research output and quality in the life sciences. The institute employs 850 researchers in 60 research groups and focuses its research in three areas, molecular biology and genetics, neurosciences, and plant biology. Research topics include cancer, diabetes, birth defects, Alzheimers disease, Parkinsons disease, AIDS, the March of Dimes provided the initial funding and continues to support the institute. Current research is funded by a variety of organizations, such as the NIH, the HHMI and private organizations such as Paris-based Ipsen, in addition, the internally administered Innovation Grants Program encourages cutting-edge high-risk research. In 2016 Ted Waitt, founder of computer manufacturer Gateway, Inc. became chair of the board of directors, replacing Qualcomm co-founder Irwin M. Jacobs, the institute appointed genome biologist Eric Lander and stem cell biologist Irving Weissman as non-resident fellows in November 2009. The campus was designed by Louis Kahn, Salk had sought to make a beautiful campus in order to draw the best researchers in the world. Salk and Kahn – having both descended from Russian Jewish parents that had immigrated to the United States – had a deeper connection than just mere partners on an architectural project, the results of their connection is seen in the design that resulted from their collaboration. The original buildings of the Salk Institute were designated as a landmark in 1991. The entire 27-acre site was deemed eligible by the California Historical Resources Commission in 2006 for listing on the National Register of Historic Places, the institute has three Nobel laureates on its faculty, Elizabeth Blackburn, Sydney Brenner, and Roger Guillemin. Three of Salks 11 Nobel laureates are now deceased, Francis Crick, Robert W. Holley, another five scientists trained at Salk have gone on to win Nobel prizes. The institute is organized into several units, each of which is further composed of several scientific groups. Irwin M. Jacobs is Chairman of the Board of Trustees, edward Callaway is the chair of the academic council. Six of these are members of the HHMI while more than a quarter are members of the NAS, in December 2009, the Time magazine ranked Joseph R. Eckers mapping of the human epigenome as the #2 biggest scientific achievement of 2009. In May 2008, California announced that it would provide 270 million US dollars for funding CIRM, the Sanford Consortium for Regenerative Medicine, a joint effort between Salk Institute, UCSD, Burnham Institute and TSRI, received $43 million from this funding. Salk and Kahn approached the city of San Diego in March 1960 about a gift of land on the Torrey Pines Mesa and were granted their request after a referendum in June 1960. The National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, known today as the March of Dimes, construction began in 1962 and a handful of researchers moved into the first laboratory in 1963
12.
Laboratory of Molecular Biology
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A new £212m replacement building constructed close by to the original site on the Cambridge Biomedical Campus was opened in May 2013. The road outside the new building is named Francis Crick Avenue after the 1962 joint Nobel Prize winner, the LMB has a deliberately simple administrative environment. Their recommendations were simply advisory, leaving the division leaders a free hand as to how to run their affairs, within the LMB, Perutz’s criterion of how to arrange things was that the act of doing science should be facilitated at all levels. The LMB had a budget, there were no personal budgets or equipment — everything was communal. It had state of the art equipment and was financed by the MRC. Chemical reagents, glassware and other expendables could be withdrawn from a store with only a signature required. Key to the functioning of the lab was Michael Fuller. There was no hierarchy, everyone was on first-name terms. Most members of the lab met freely in the canteen, which was said to assist inter-divisional communication and collaboration, today the LMB has around 400 scientists, of whom 130 are postdoctoral researchers and 90 students. As of 2015 there are around fifty group leaders Groups are part of one of the four divisions of the LMB, Cell Biology, Neurobiology, Protein and Nucleic Acid Chemistry, here, in the Cavendish laboratory, he started his lifelong work on hemoglobin. The death of Lord Rutherford led to his successor, Lawrence Bragg, Bragg became a major supporter of Perutz and his group in those early days. After World War II, many scientists from the side of science turned to biology, bringing with them a new way of thinking. John Kendrew joined Perutz’s group to study a protein related to hemoglobin — myoglobin — in 1946. In 1947, the Medical Research Council, under the guidance of its Secretary Harold Himsworth, decided to form, the group, which by 1948 also included Hugh Huxley working on muscle, was joined in 1949 by Francis Crick, who worked initially on protein crystallography. In 1951 they were joined by James Watson, Hugh Huxley discovered that muscle contraction works by a sliding filament mechanism. In 1957 the group’s name was changed to the “MRC Unit for Molecular Biology”, also that year, Vernon Ingram discovered that the disease sickle cell anaemia is caused by a single amino acid change in the hemoglobin molecule and Sydney Brenner joined the Unit. In 1958, Crick’s review “On Protein Synthesis” appeared, this out, for the first time, the central dogma of molecular biology, the sequence hypothesis. In 1961 Brenner helped discover messenger RNA and, in the year, he
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