Adam Eyre-Walker
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Adam C. Eyre-Walker is a British evolutionary geneticist, currently Professor of Biology (Evolution, Behaviour and Environment) in the School of Life Sciences at the
University of Sussex The University of Sussex is a public university, public research university, research university located in Falmer, East Sussex, England. It lies mostly within the city boundaries of Brighton and Hove. Its large campus site is surrounded by the ...
. He is noted for making "significant contributions to our understanding of evolution at the molecular level" and pioneering the use of DNA sequence databases for extracting information about the evolution of genomes.


Early life and career

Eyre-Walker took his B.Sc. at the
University of Nottingham The University of Nottingham is a public research university in Nottingham, England. It was founded as University College Nottingham in 1881, and was granted a royal charter in 1948. Nottingham's main campus (University Park Campus, Nottingh ...
and Ph.D. at the
University of Edinburgh The University of Edinburgh (, ; abbreviated as ''Edin.'' in Post-nominal letters, post-nominals) is a Public university, public research university based in Edinburgh, Scotland. Founded by the City of Edinburgh Council, town council under th ...
. His doctoral thesis, submitted in 1992, was titled ''Studies of Synonymous Codon Evolution in Mammals'' and supervised by William G. Hill. Eyre-Walker joined the University of Sussex in 1997.


Scientific research

His research focuses on molecular and genome evolution, and studies the rate, pattern and effects of
genetic mutations In biology, a mutation is an alteration in the nucleic acid sequence of the genome of an organism, virus, or extrachromosomal DNA. Viral genomes contain either DNA or RNA. Mutations result from errors during DNA or viral replication, mitosi ...
through the statistical analysis of
DNA sequences A nucleic acid sequence is a succession of bases within the nucleotides forming alleles within a DNA (using GACT) or RNA (GACU) molecule. This succession is denoted by a series of a set of five different letters that indicate the order of the ...
and
mathematical modeling A mathematical model is an abstract and concrete, abstract description of a concrete system using mathematics, mathematical concepts and language of mathematics, language. The process of developing a mathematical model is termed ''mathematical m ...
from an evolutionary perspective. According to Eyre-Walker: "One of the central mysteries of evolution is how much of it is due to adaptive evolution at the molecular level. I have devoted much of my career in one way or another to answering this question and those related to it. It seems that adaptive evolution has a major role to play in many species, but we are far from understanding the full picture."


Research on the scientific process

In 2013, with Nina Stoletzki, Eyre-Walker published research arguing that scientists are poor at assessing one another's work: "... scientists have little ability to judge either the intrinsic merit of a paper or its likely impact....the number of citations a paper receives is an extremely error-prone measure of scientific merit.... ndimpact factor is likely to be a poor measure of merit, since it depends on subjective assessment". He concluded: "Scientists are probably the best judges of science, but they are pretty bad at it". Two years later, Eyre-Walker and colleagues Isabelle Cook and Sam Grange researched the optimal size and structure of scientific laboratories. By analyzing data from almost 400 different laboratories, they reported that the bigger the lab, the more productive it is (measured in number of publications, impact factor of the journals in which group members publish papers, and number of citations).


Achievements and awards

Eyre-Walker won the 2002 Balfour Prize from the Genetics Society and earned the President's award from the
European Society for Evolutionary Biology The European Society for Evolutionary Biology (ESEB) was founded on 28 August 1987 in Basel (Switzerland), with ~ 450 evolutionary biologists attending the inaugural congress of the Society; Arthur Cain became the Society’s first president. The ...
in 2012. He was elected a
Fellow of the Royal Society Fellowship of the Royal Society (FRS, ForMemRS and HonFRS) is an award granted by the Fellows of the Royal Society of London to individuals who have made a "substantial contribution to the improvement of natural science, natural knowledge, incl ...
in 2020.


Selected publications

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References


External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Eyre-Walker, Adam Living people Year of birth missing (living people) Alumni of the University of Nottingham Alumni of the University of Edinburgh Fellows of the Royal Society 20th-century British biologists 21st-century British biologists English biologists English geneticists British evolutionary biologists