James O. McInerney is an Irish-born microbiologist, computational evolutionary biologist, professor, and former head of the School of Life Sciences 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 ...

. He is an elected Fellow of the

American Society for Microbiology The American Society for Microbiology (ASM), originally the Society of American Bacteriologists, is a professional organization for scientists who study viruses, bacteria, fungi, algae, and protozoa as well as other aspects of microbiology. It wa ...

and elected Fellow of the

Linnean Society The Linnean Society of London is a learned society dedicated to the study and dissemination of information concerning natural history, evolution, and taxonomy. It possesses several important biological specimen, manuscript and literature collec ...

. In June 2020 he was elected president-designate of the

Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution The Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution (SMBE) is a scientific and academic organization founded in 1982 to support academic research in the field of molecular evolution. The society hosts an annual meeting, typically in June or July. It al ...

and in 2022 he took up the role of President. He is deputy chair of

BBSRC Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), part of UK Research and Innovation, is a non-departmental public body (NDPB), and is the largest UK public funder of non-medical bioscience. It predominantly funds scientific res ...

committee C.

Early life and education

McInerney completed his

bachelor's degree A bachelor's degree (from Medieval Latin ''baccalaureus'') or baccalaureate (from Modern Latin ''baccalaureatus'') is an undergraduate degree awarded by colleges and universities upon completion of a course of study lasting three to six years ...

NUI Galway The University of Galway () is a public research university located in the city of Galway, Ireland. The university was founded in 1845 as "Queen's College, Galway". It was known as "University College, Galway" (UCG) () from 1908 to 1997 and as ...

. In 1994, he was awarded a

PhD A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of graduate study and original research. The name of the deg ...

(also from

). In 2013, he was awarded a Doctor of Science (DSc) degree from the National University of Ireland.

Career and research

After completing his PhD, McInerney worked as a

postdoctoral researcher A postdoctoral fellow, postdoctoral researcher, or simply postdoc, is a person professionally conducting research after the completion of their doctoral studies (typically a PhD). Postdocs most commonly, but not always, have a temporary acade ...

at the National Diagnostics Centre in

Galway Galway ( ; , ) is a City status in Ireland, city in (and the county town of) County Galway. It lies on the River Corrib between Lough Corrib and Galway Bay. It is the most populous settlement in the province of Connacht, the List of settleme ...

and in the Department of Zoology at The Natural History Museum, London. In 1999, McInerney returned to

Ireland Ireland (, ; ; Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean, in Northwestern Europe. Geopolitically, the island is divided between the Republic of Ireland (officially Names of the Irish state, named Irelan ...

to set up the Bioinformatics Research Group at

NUI Maynooth Maynooth University (MU) (), is a constituent university of the National University of Ireland in Maynooth, County Kildare, Ireland. Maynooth University was formerly known as National University of Ireland, Maynooth (NUIM; ). It was Ireland ...

and became the Director of the Genetics and Bioinformatics degree course. In 2012-2013, he took a sabbatical at the Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics at

Harvard University Harvard University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyma ...

. In 2015, the McInerney research group moved to

The University of Manchester The University of Manchester is a public university, public research university in Manchester, England. The main campus is south of Manchester city centre, Manchester City Centre on Wilmslow Road, Oxford Road. The University of Manchester is c ...

where McInerney took up a Chair in Evolutionary Biology. In 2016, McInerney was appointed as the Director of the Research Domain of
Evolution, Systems and Genomics
in th
Faculty of Biology, Medicine and Health
at the

University of Manchester The University of Manchester is a public university, public research university in Manchester, England. The main campus is south of Manchester city centre, Manchester City Centre on Wilmslow Road, Oxford Road. The University of Manchester is c ...

. In 2018, McInerney moved from Manchester to the

, to take up the Chair in Evolutionary Biology and the position of Head of the School of Life Sciences. In August 2024, McInerney moved to

The University of Liverpool The University of Liverpool (abbreviated UOL) is a public research university in Liverpool, England. Founded in 1881 as University College Liverpool, Victoria University, it received Royal Charter by King Edward VII in 1903 attaining the dec ...

to take up the position of Head of the Department of Evolution, Ecology and Behaviour. McInerney's early research career focused on the study of codon usage in a variety of organisms including ''

Trichomonas vaginalis ''Trichomonas vaginalis'' is an Anaerobic organism, anaerobic, flagellated protozoan parasite and the causative agent of a Sexually transmitted infection, sexually transmitted disease called trichomoniasis. It is the most common pathogenic protoz ...

'' and ''

Borrelia burgdorferi ''Borrelia burgdorferi'' is a bacterial species of the spirochete class in the genus '' Borrelia'', and is one of the causative agents of Lyme disease in humans. Along with a few similar genospecies, some of which also cause Lyme disease, it m ...

''. McInerney was the first to show that the leading strands of replication and the lagging strands of replication in a prokaryotic genome could have significantly different codon usage patterns, due to the way in which polymerases replicate DNA. One of his first software packages, GCUA, allowed for the accessible and reproducible analysis of codon usage by other biologists. Since then, the McInerney research group has published several bioinformatic software programs including Clann: Software for inferring phylogenetic

supertree A supertree is a single phylogenetic tree assembled from a combination of smaller phylogenetic trees, which may have been assembled using different datasets (e.g. morphological and molecular) or a different selection of taxa. Supertree algorithms ...

s, Crann: Software for inferring selection, Modelgenerator: Amino acid and nucleotide substitution model selection, PutGaps: DNA gapped file from amino acid alignment, and TIGER: Identifying rapidly-evolving characters in evolutionary data. Currently, the McInerney lab focusses on understanding the origins of eukaryotes, and on understanding

horizontal gene transfer Horizontal gene transfer (HGT) or lateral gene transfer (LGT) is the movement of genetic material between organisms other than by the ("vertical") transmission of DNA from parent to offspring (reproduction). HGT is an important factor in the e ...

, and prokaryotic pangenomes and the assemblage of genes within them McInerney has been funded by the

Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), part of UK Research and Innovation, is a non-departmental public body (NDPB), and is the largest UK public funder of non-medical bioscience. It predominantly funds science, scient ...

(BBSRC),

Leverhulme Trust The Leverhulme Trust () is a large national grant-making organisation in the United Kingdom. It was established in 1925 under the will of the 1st Viscount Leverhulme (1851–1925), with the instruction that its resources should be used to cover ...

, The European Molecular Biology Organisation, and

Science Foundation Ireland Science Foundation Ireland (SFI; ) was a statutory body in Ireland. It was an agency of the Department of Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science, with responsibility for funding oriented basic and applied research in th ...

and with start-up funding from both the

and the

Awards and honours

* Appointed as Senior Editor for Evolution and Responses to Interventions for the journal Microbial Genomics. * Elected President of the

(President-elect for 2021, President in 2022, Past-President for 2023). * Elected Fellow of the

Linnean Society of London The Linnean Society of London is a learned society dedicated to the study and dissemination of information concerning natural history, evolution, and Taxonomy (biology), taxonomy. It possesses several important biological specimen, manuscript a ...

(2016). * Elected Fellow of the

American Academy of Microbiology American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, p ...

(2015). * Recognised by the Irish government with a conference ambassador award by the Minister for Tourism (2015). * Elected secretary of the

(2013-2017). * Associate Editor for

Molecular Biology and Evolution ''Molecular Biology and Evolution'' (''MBE'') is a monthly peer-reviewed scientific journal published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution. It publishes work in the intersection of molecular bi ...

(2009-2018)

Public outreach

* Synopsis of Nature Micro (2017) paper "Why Prokaryotes Have Pangenomes" * Speaking on Virgin Births (

parthenogenesis Parthenogenesis (; from the Greek + ) is a natural form of asexual reproduction in which the embryo develops directly from an egg without need for fertilization. In animals, parthenogenesis means the development of an embryo from an unfertiliz ...

) for FBMH's science-themed advent calendar * Synopsis of Nature (2015) paper "Endosymbiotic origin and differential loss of eukaryotic genes" * Radio interview for RTE's "Bright Sparks" radio series * Synopsis of polar bear paper Cell (2014) paper "Population Genomics Reveal Recent Speciation and Rapid Evolutionary Adaptation in Polar Bears"

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:McInerney, James O. Irish microbiologists 1969 births Living people Fellows of the Linnean Society of London Alumni of the University of Galway Irish expatriates in the United Kingdom Academics of the University of Manchester Academics of the University of Nottingham Evolutionary biologists Computational biologists Scientists from County Clare