Edwin Southern

Sir Edwin Southern 2012 in Oxford

Sir Edwin Mellor Southern (born  June 7, 1938 in Burnley , County Lancashire ) is a British molecular biologist who was Whitley Professor of Biochemistry at the University of Oxford from 1985 to 2005 . In the 1970s, he developed a method for detecting a specific gene sequence in a complex DNA mixture , which he named Southern Blot in his honor and which is still one of the most important techniques in molecular biology research to this day. The names of the laboratory methods developed by George R. Stark , Northern Blot for the analysis of RNA and Western Blot for the investigation of proteins, are an allusion to the name Southern Blot .

Life

Edwin Southern was born in Burnley in 1938 and studied chemistry at the University of Manchester until 1958 . Four years later his doctorate at the University of Glasgow in the subject Biochemistry . He then worked at the research station for cryogenic temperatures at the Antarctic Research Center in Cambridge . In 1967 he moved to the Mammalian Genome Unit of the Medical Research Council (MRC) at the University of Edinburgh and explored there methods for sequencing of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA). For example, the use of certain enzymes , the type II endonucleases , in DNA sequence analysis goes back to him . From 1973 in Edinburgh he also developed the laboratory method Southern Blot , later named after him , with which a specific DNA sequence can be detected in a mixture of different DNA molecules. He published it in 1975 in the scientific journal Journal of Molecular Biology , entitled "Detection of specific sequences among DNA fragments separated by gel electrophoresis" (J Mol Biol 1975 98 (3):. 503-517). The fact that Edwin Southern did not have it protected by patent also contributed to the widespread use of this technology .

Together with the Clinical and Population Cytogenetics Unit of the MRC at the Western General Hospital in Edinburgh , he initiated the first project to map the human genome from 1979 , in the context of which he developed various technologies for the separation, size determination and sequencing of DNA. In 1985, five years after his appointment as director of the MRC Mammalian Genome Unit, he became Whitley Professor of Biochemistry at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Trinity College there . From 1988 Edwin Southern was significantly involved in the development of DNA chip technology , for which, in contrast to the Southern blot technology, he applied for and received several patents. In 1995 he founded Oxford Gene Technology , for which he serves as President and Chief Scientific Officer . Ten years later he was at the University of Oxford emeritus .

Since 2019 the media group Clarivate has counted him among the favorites for a Nobel Prize ( Clarivate Citation Laureates ).

Awards

The academic and state honors Edwin Southern received for his scientific work include admission to the Royal Society as a Fellow in 1983 and Knight Bachelor in 2003, and the Gairdner Foundation International Award 1990, the Royal Medal 1998 and the Albert Lasker Awards for Clinical Medical Research 2005. He is also an honorary member of the Biochemical Society and since 1988 an external member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences . The University of Padua (1988), the University of Edinburgh (1991), the University of Lund (1995), the University of Uppsala (2003) and the University of Glasgow (2004) awarded him an honorary doctorate .

literature

• Vadim V. Demidov: 65th Birthday of Edwin M. Southern, Molecular Biology and Biotechnology Mastermind. In: Drug Discovery Today . 8 (15) / 2003. Elsevier, pp. 666/667, ISSN  1359-6446
• Microarray Pioneer Ed Southern Prepares for Life after Retirement. In: BioArray News. Issue 4 (10) / 2004 of March 10, 2004, pp. 7–9
• Anne Harding: Sir Edwin Southern: Scientist as Problem Solver. In: The Lancet . Volume 366, edition 9501 of December 3, 2005, p. 1919
• Daidree Tofano, Ilse R. Wiechers, Robert Cook-Deegan: Edwin Southern, DNA blotting, and Microarray Technology: A Case Study of the Shifting Role of Patents in Academic Molecular Biology. In: Genomics, Society and Policy. 2 (2) / 2006. ESRC Genomics Network, ISSN  1746-5354 , pp. 50-61

Web links

Commons : Edwin Mellor Southern  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

• Georgina Ferry: Oxford Today - The University Magazine: Blessèd blot ( April 19, 2011 memento in the Internet Archive ) 18 (2) / 2006. Article about Edwin Southern (English, with picture)