Janet Thornton Explained

Dame Janet Thornton
Birth Name:Janet Maureen McLoughlin
Birth Date:1949 5, df=yes
Education:Bury Grammar School
Thesis Title:The conformation of dinucleotides
Thesis Url:https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/731231069
Thesis Year:1975
Nationality:British
Children:2

Dame Janet Maureen Thornton, (born 23 May 1949) is a senior scientist and director emeritus at the European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI), part of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL).[1] [2] She is one of the world's leading researchers in structural bioinformatics, using computational methods to understand protein structure and function.[3] [4] [5] She served as director of the EBI from October 2001 to June 2015, and played a key role in ELIXIR.

Education

Thornton attended Bury Grammar School until 1967, where she was head girl.[6] After graduating in physics from the University of Nottingham, Thornton completed a master's degree in biophysics at King's College London, and a PhD in biophysics at the National Institute for Medical Research, Mill Hill, London in 1973.[7]

Career and research

After her PhD, Thornton worked in molecular biophysics with David Chilton Phillips at the University of Oxford.[8] [9] In 1978, she returned to the National Institute for Medical Research, and following that took up to a Fellowship at Birkbeck College, part of the University of London. In 1990 she was appointed Professor and Director of the Biomolecular Structure and Modeling Unit in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at University College London and later also was appointed to the Bernal Chair in the Crystallography Department at Birkbeck College.

Thornton was Director of the European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI) from 2001 to 2015, on the Wellcome Genome Campus at Hinxton near Cambridge.[10] She was an organiser of the Intelligent Systems for Molecular Biology (ISMB) and European Conference on Computational Biology (ECCB) joint Conference in Glasgow in 2004.[11]

Thornton's work is highly interdisciplinary, interfacing with structural biology, bioinformatics, biological chemistry and chemoinformatics, amongst others. She was an early pioneer in structure validation for protein crystallography, developing the widely used ProCheck software.[12] Together with Christine Orengo, she introduced the CATH[13] classification of protein structure.[14] [15] [16] [17] [18] [19] [20] Her group developed a robust enzyme classification, comparison and annotation tool – the EC-BLAST[21] which calculates similarity between enzymes based on chemical reactions by capturing the bond change(s), reaction centre(s) or structural similarity between them.[22]

From 2008 to 2012, she co-ordinated the four-year preparatory phase of the European life sciences data infrastructure ELIXIR.[23] As of 2013 she remains on the ELIXIR board as one of EMBL's scientific delegates.[24] Her research has been funded by the Medical Research Council, the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC),[2] [25] the Wellcome Trust, and the European Union.

Doctoral students and postdocs

Thornton has supervised several PhD[26] and postdoctoral researchers including Sarah Teichmann[14] and David Jones.

Awards and honours

Thornton was elected Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1999.[27] She became a member of the European Molecular Biology Organisation (EMBO) in 2000,[28] a foreign associate of the US National Academy of Sciences in 2003, and a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences (FMedSci) in 2014. Thornton is a supernumerary fellow of Churchill College, Cambridge.[29] She was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (FRSC) in 2017.[30] Thornton's nomination for the Royal Society reads

Her citation on election to the Academy of Medical Sciences reads:

Thornton was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 2000 and Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in the 2012 Birthday Honours for services to bioinformatics. The Times named Thornton number 86 of their "Eureka 100" British scientists in 2010.[31] She was awarded the Suffrage Science award in 2011.

Notes and References

  1. Web site: https://web.archive.org/web/20130609064751/http://www.csap.cam.ac.uk/network/janet-thornton. Professor Dame Janet Thornton: Director, European Bioinformatics Institute. 9 June 2013.
  2. Web site: https://web.archive.org/web/20150209144615/http://www.bbsrc.ac.uk/news/people-skills-training/2014/140319-f-gb-bioscience-pioneers-janet-thornton.aspx. Great British bioscience pioneers – Professor Dame Janet Thornton. 9 February 2015.
  3. Zagorski . N. . Profile of Janet M. Thornton. 10.1073/pnas.0505819102 . Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences . 102 . 35 . 12296–12298 . 2005 . 16118281. 1194944. 2005PNAS..10212296Z . free .
  4. Caroline . Dean. Caroline Dean. Mary . Osborn. Mary Osborn. Alicia . Oshlack. Alicia Oshlack. Janet . Thornton. Janet Thornton. Women in Science. 10.1186/gb4005 . Genome Biology. 3439960. 22405408. 13 . 3 . 148–201 . 2012 . free .
  5. Web site: Thornton Research Group Page. https://web.archive.org/web/20110418184112/http://www.ebi.ac.uk/Thornton/. 18 April 2011.
  6. News: Thomson . David . Top scientist tells Bury Grammar School pupils: 'follow your dreams' . Bury Times. burytimes.co.uk . 2013-09-27 . en.
  7. PhD . Janet. Thornton . The conformation of dinucleotides . King's College London . 1975 . Janet Thornton. 731231069. .
  8. Thornton . J. M.. Janet Thornton . Bayley . P. M. . 10.1002/bip.1976.360150511 . Conformational energy calculations for dinucleotide molecules. A systematic study of dinucleotide conformation, with application to diadenosine pyrophosphate . Biopolymers . 15 . 5 . 955–975 . 1976 . 177120 . 30211950.
  9. Perkins . W. J. . Piper . E. A. . Thornton . J. . 10.1016/0010-4825(76)90034-2 . Computer techniques for conformational studies of biological molecules . Computers in Biology and Medicine . 6 . 1 . 23–31 . 1976 . 1253578.
  10. Web site: https://web.archive.org/web/20150703074247/https://www.ebi.ac.uk/about/news/press-releases/janet-thornton-steps-down. 3 July 2015. Janet Thornton steps down. 30 June 2015 . European Bioinformatics Institute.
  11. Web site: ISMB/ECCB 2004. www.iscb.org.
  12. Laskowski . R. A. . MacArthur . M. W. . Moss . D. S. . Thornton . J. M. . Janet Thornton. PROCHECK: A program to check the stereochemical quality of protein structures . 10.1107/S0021889892009944 . Journal of Applied Crystallography . 26 . 2 . 283–291 . 1993 . 1993JApCr..26..283L .
  13. Orengo . C. A. . Michie . A. D. . Jones . S. . Jones . D. T. . David Tudor Jones. Swindells . M. B. . Thornton . J. M. . Janet Thornton. 10.1016/S0969-2126(97)00260-8 . CATH – a hierarchic classification of protein domain structures . Structure . 5 . 8 . 1093–1109 . 1997 . 9309224. free .
  14. 10.1038/nmeth.2831. 24645189. The Author File: Janet Thornton. Nature Methods. 11. 2. 115. 2014. Marx . V. . 1970327. free.
  15. 2500530. 1989. Sibanda. B. L.. Conformation of beta-hairpins in protein structures. A systematic classification with applications to modelling by homology, electron density fitting and protein engineering. Journal of Molecular Biology. 206. 4. 759–77. Blundell. T. L.. Tom Blundell. Thornton. J. M.. Janet Thornton . 10.1016/0022-2836(89)90583-4.
  16. 3224756. 1988. Thornton. J. M.. Janet Thornton. Protein-protein recognition via side-chain interactions. Biochemical Society Transactions. 16. 6. 927–30. Singh. J. Campbell. S. Blundell. T. L.. Tom Blundell . 10.1042/bst0160927.
  17. 3550471. 1987. Blundell. T. L.. Tom Blundell. Knowledge-based prediction of protein structures and the design of novel molecules. Nature. 326. 6111. 347–52. Sibanda. B. L.. Sternberg. M. J.. Michael Sternberg. Thornton. J. M.. Janet Thornton. 10.1038/326347a0. 1987Natur.326..347B. 4330510.
  18. 6646210. 1983. Blundell. T. Tom Blundell. Solvent-induced distortions and the curvature of alpha-helices. Nature. 306. 5940. 281–3. Barlow. D. Borkakoti. N. Thornton. J. Janet Thornton . 10.1038/306281a0. 1983Natur.306..281B. 4331613.
  19. 10.1093/bioinformatics/btn528. The Protein Feature Ontology: A tool for the unification of protein feature annotations. Bioinformatics. 24. 23. 2767–2772. 2008. Reeves . G. A.. Eilbeck . K.. Magrane . M.. O'Donovan . C.. Montecchi-Palazzi . L.. Harris . M. A.. Orchard . S.. Jimenez . R. C.. Prlic . A.. Hubbard . T. J. P.. Tim Hubbard. Hermjakob . H.. Thornton . J. M.. Janet Thornton . 18936051 . 2912506.
  20. 10.1038/nmeth.2803. EC-BLAST: A tool to automatically search and compare enzyme reactions. Nature Methods. 11. 2. 171–4. 2014. Rahman . S. A. . Cuesta . S. M. . Furnham . N. . Holliday . G. L. . Thornton . J. M. . 24412978 . 4122987.
  21. Rahman. Syed Asad. Cuesta. Sergio Martinez. Furnham. Nicholas. Holliday. Gemma L.. Thornton. Janet M.. 1 February 2014. EC-BLAST: a tool to automatically search and compare enzyme reactions. Nature Methods. en. 11. 2. 171–174. 10.1038/nmeth.2803. 1548-7091. 4122987. 24412978.
  22. Rahman. Syed Asad. Torrance. Gilliean. Baldacci. Lorenzo. Martínez Cuesta. Sergio. Fenninger. Franz. Gopal. Nimish. Choudhary. Saket. May. John W.. Holliday. Gemma L.. 1 July 2016. Reaction Decoder Tool (RDT): extracting features from chemical reactions. Bioinformatics. 32. 13. 2065–2066. 10.1093/bioinformatics/btw096. 1367-4811. 4920114. 27153692.
  23. Crosswell . L. C. . Thornton . J. M. . Janet Thornton. 10.1016/j.tibtech.2012.02.002 . ELIXIR: A distributed infrastructure for European biological data . Trends in Biotechnology . 30 . 5 . 241–242 . 2012 . 22417641.
  24. Web site: ELIXIR's leadership: Governance in ELIXIR's construction phase. https://web.archive.org/web/20131014053701/http://www.elixir-europe.org/about/elixirs-leadership. 14 October 2013.
  25. Web site: UK Government Grants awarded to Janet Thornton. https://web.archive.org/web/20150310045251/http://gtr.rcuk.ac.uk/person/7AAAC37B-EE56-4900-8539-813ABA0680F1. 10 March 2015. Research Councils UK.
  26. Web site: Anon. 2014. https://web.archive.org/web/20140304170946/http://www.ebi.ac.uk/research/publications/theses. Publications EMBL-EBI PhD Theses. 4 March 2014.
  27. Web site: Why Prof. Thornton was awarded the FRS. https://web.archive.org/web/20071112020719/http://www.royalsoc.ac.uk/page.asp?id=2415. 12 November 2007. Royal Society. London.
  28. Web site: The EMBO Pocket Directory. Anon. 2000. https://web.archive.org/web/20150316002020/http://www.embo.org/documents/members/The_EMBO_Pocket_Directory.pdf. 16 March 2015. European Molecular Biology Organization.
  29. Web site: Professor Dame Janet Thornton PhD, CBE, FRS, DBE, Churchill College, Cambridge. https://web.archive.org/web/20150310040928/https://www.chu.cam.ac.uk/people/view/janet-thornton/. 10 March 2015.
  30. Web site: Our Honorary Fellows. Royal Society of Chemistry. 27 February 2018.
  31. News: Eureka 100: the people that matter. thetimes.co.uk. The Times. London.

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