Michael Ashburner (23 May 1942 – 7 July 2023) was an English biologist and Professor in the Department of Genetics at

University of Cambridge The University of Cambridge is a Public university, public collegiate university, collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209, the University of Cambridge is the List of oldest universities in continuous operation, wo ...

. He also served as joint-head and co-founder of the European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI) of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) and a

Fellow A fellow is a title and form of address for distinguished, learned, or skilled individuals in academia, medicine, research, and industry. The exact meaning of the term differs in each field. In learned society, learned or professional society, p ...

of Churchill College, Cambridge.

Education

Born in

Brighton Brighton ( ) is a seaside resort in the city status in the United Kingdom, city of Brighton and Hove, East Sussex, England, south of London. Archaeological evidence of settlement in the area dates back to the Bronze Age Britain, Bronze Age, R ...

, Sussex, England, Ashburner was educated at the Royal Grammar School, High Wycombe from 1953 to 1960. He studied the Natural Sciences Tripos at the

as an undergraduate student of Churchill College, Cambridge, receiving his

Bachelor of Arts A Bachelor of Arts (abbreviated B.A., BA, A.B. or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is the holder of a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the liberal arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts deg ...

degree in Genetics in 1964. His PhD was supervised by Alan Henderson and awarded in 1968, followed by a Doctor of Science in 1978.

Research and career

Most of Ashburner's research was on the model organism ''

Drosophila melanogaster ''Drosophila melanogaster'' is a species of fly (an insect of the Order (biology), order Diptera) in the family Drosophilidae. The species is often referred to as the fruit fly or lesser fruit fly, or less commonly the "vinegar fly", "pomace fly" ...

''. Ashburner's career began in the early period of molecular biology prior to the development of most of the recombinant DNA techniques in use today, such as Northern/Southern/Western blotting. Nevertheless, by observing patterns of "puffing" in polytene chromosomes, he established the existence of a cascade of genetic controls in the post-larval development triggered by ecdysone. The Ashburner model of 1974 became a paradigm for metazoan gene regulation inasmuch as the

Jacob Jacob, later known as Israel, is a Hebrew patriarch of the Abrahamic religions. He first appears in the Torah, where he is described in the Book of Genesis as a son of Isaac and Rebecca. Accordingly, alongside his older fraternal twin brother E ...

- Monod model did for prokaryotes. Ashburner collaborated widely and mentored numerous PhD students and

postdoctoral research 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 ...

students during his career. Ashburner was also a member of the consortium that eventually sequenced and annotated the ''

'' genome. Ashburner's recollections of the sequencing of the ''D. melanogaster'' genome forms the basis of a book entitled "Won for All: How the Drosophila Genome Was Sequenced". A prolonged effort by his laboratory to characterise the '' Adh'' region became invaluable for validating annotation strategies when large-scale genome information became available. Ashburner and his colleagues have received funding from the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), the Medical Research Council (MRC) and Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) for their studies on Drosophila genomics leveraging the ''D. melanogaster'' genome and its annotation.

Computational biology

Ashburner was also an early pioneer in the application of computers to biology. His contributions include his active participation in setting up FlyBase and the development of Open Biomedical Ontologies to allow machine-searchable annotation of biological information, particularly the Gene Ontology and ChEBI. He was instrumental in establishing the EBI, as well as securing its location in the UK, and acted as the first head of the EBI jointly with Graham Cameron.

Open science advocacy

As part of his involvement the sequencing of the ''D. melanogaster'' genome, Ashburner played an instrumental role in ensuring that the resulting sequence and annotations would be made publicly available. Additionally, Ashburner made a strong case for the human genome published in

Science Science is a systematic discipline that builds and organises knowledge in the form of testable hypotheses and predictions about the universe. Modern science is typically divided into twoor threemajor branches: the natural sciences, which stu ...

in 2000 by Celera Genomics to be made freely available, and spoke out repeatedly against the privatization of genomic resources. Ashburner was also one of the signatories of the first open letter to Science in 2001 calling for a centralized, open repository of the scientific literature, and subsequently became a strong advocate of

Open Access Open access (OA) is a set of principles and a range of practices through which nominally copyrightable publications are delivered to readers free of access charges or other barriers. With open access strictly defined (according to the 2001 de ...

publishing, speaking out for this cause in the scientific literature and popular media. He also provided written evidence to the UK Parliament Select Committee on Science and Technology supporting

publishing and served on the initial advisory board of UK PubMed Central, the first global mirror site of the PubMed Central repository of freely available biological literature.

Awards and honours

Ashburner was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the

American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (The Academy) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, and other ...

in 1993. He received the Gregor Mendel Medal from the Academy of Sciences, Czech Republic in 1998, the first George W. Beadle Award of the Genetics Society of America in 1999, an honorary Doctorate from the University of Crete in 2002, an honorary Doctor of Science from 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 ...

in 2003, the Genetics Society Medal of the UK Genetics Society in 2005 and the Franklin Award of the Bioinformatics Organization in 2006. Ashburner was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1990, his certificate of election reads: Ashburner was awarded Member of the Academia Europaea (MAE) in 1989.

Personal life

Ashburner married Francesca Ryan and had one son and two daughters, Rebecca, Geoffrey and Isabel. He died on 7 July 2023, at the age of 81.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ashburner, Michael 1942 births 2023 deaths Scientists from Brighton Members of the European Molecular Biology Organization Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Fellows of the International Society for Computational Biology Fellows of the Royal Society English geneticists Members of Academia Europaea British bioinformaticians Alumni of Churchill College, Cambridge Fellows of Churchill College, Cambridge People educated at the Royal Grammar School, High Wycombe English biologists Drosophila melanogaster genetics Molecular geneticists Ontologists Open access activists