Richard M. Durbin Explained

Richard Durbin
Birth Name:Richard Michael Durbin
Birth Date:1960 12, df=yes
Nationality:British
Education:Highgate School
Alma Mater:University of Cambridge (BA, PhD)
Thesis Title:Studies on the development and organisation of the nervous system of Caenorhabditis elegans
Thesis Url:https://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.233920
Thesis Year:1987
Doctoral Advisor:John G. White
Doctoral Students:Ewan Birney[1]

Richard Michael Durbin (born 1960) is a British computational biologist[2] and Al-Kindi Professor of Genetics at the University of Cambridge.[3] [4] [5] He also serves as an associate faculty member at the Wellcome Sanger Institute where he was previously a senior group leader.[6] [7]

Education

Durbin was educated at The Hall School, Hampstead and Highgate School in London. After competing in the 1978/9 International Mathematical Olympiad, he went on to study at the University of Cambridge graduating in 1982[8] with a second class honours degree in the Cambridge Mathematical Tripos. After graduating, he continued to study for a PhD[9] at St John's College, Cambridge studying the development and organisation of the nervous system of Caenorhabditis elegans whilst working at the Laboratory of Molecular Biology (LMB) in Cambridge, supervised by John Graham White.[9]

Career and research

Durbin's early work included developing the primary instrument software for one of the first X-ray crystallography area detectors[10] and the MRC Biorad confocal microscope, alongside contributions to neural modelling.[11] [12]

He then led the informatics for the Caenorhabditis elegans genome project,[13] and alongside Jean Thierry-Mieg developed the genome database AceDB, which evolved into the WormBase web resource. Following this he played an important role in data collection for and interpretation of the human genome sequence.[14]

He has developed numerous methods for computational sequence analysis.[15] [16] These include gene finding (e.g. GeneWise) with Ewan Birney[17] and Hidden Markov models for protein and nucleic acid alignment and matching (e.g. HMMER) with Sean Eddy and Graeme Mitchison. A standard textbook Biological Sequence analysis coauthored with Sean Eddy, Anders Krogh and Graeme Mitchison describes some of this work. Using these methods Durbin worked with colleagues to build a series of important genomic data resources, including the protein family database Pfam,[18] the genome database Ensembl,[19] and the gene family database TreeFam.[20]

More recently Durbin has returned to sequencing and has developed low coverage approaches to population genome sequencing, applied first to yeast,[21] [22] and has been one of the leaders in the application of new sequencing technology to study human genome variation.[23] [24] Durbin currently co-leads the international 1000 Genomes Project to characterise variation down to 1% allele frequency as a foundation for human genetics.

Awards and honours

Durbin was a joint winner of the Mullard Award of the Royal Society in 1994 (for work on the confocal microscope), won the Lord Lloyd of Kilgerran Award of the Foundation for Science and Technology in 2004, and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 2004[25] and a member of the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) in 2009. The Royal Society awarded its Gabor Medal to Durbin in 2017 for his contributions to computational biology.[26] In 2023 he received the International Prize for Biology for his work on the Biology of Genomes.

Durbin's certificate of election for the Royal Society reads:

Personal life

Durbin is the son of James Durbin and is married to Julie Ahringer, a scientist at the Gurdon Institute. They have two children.

Notes and References

  1. PhD. Ewan . Birney. Ewan Birney. Sequence alignment in bioinformatics. University of Cambridge. 2000. . cam.ac.uk. 894597337.
  2. Web site: Durbin, Richard. anon. sanger.ac.uk. en-GB. 2019-01-02.
  3. https://web.archive.org/web/20150315225606/https://www.admin.cam.ac.uk/reporter/2014-15/special/05/section7.shtml. 2015-03-15. Honorary Professors. Cambridge University Reporter. University of Cambridge. 12 December 2014. CXLV. 5.
  4. Web site: Durbin Group — Department of Genetics. Anon. gen.cam.ac.uk. en. 2019-01-02.
  5. Web site: Professor Richard Durbin — Department of Genetics. Anon. gen.cam.ac.uk. 27 September 2017 . en. 2019-01-02.
  6. Web site: Dr Richard Durbin – Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute . 2012-02-28. dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20120228004358/http://www.sanger.ac.uk/research/faculty/rdurbin/.
  7. http://archives.wellcomelibrary.org/DServe/dserve.exe?dsqIni=Dserve.ini&dsqApp=Archive&dsqCmd=Show.tcl&dsqDb=Catalog&dsqPos=0&dsqSearch=%28AltRefNo%3D%27grl%2Fdur%27%29 Richard Durbin archive collection
  8. Web site: The BioInformer nr. 1, 1997 – Interview with Dr. Richard Durbin . 2011-07-30 . https://web.archive.org/web/20111002111032/http://www.riethoven.org/BioInformer/newsletter/archives/1/interview.html . dead . 2011-10-02.
  9. PhD. Richard. Durbin. Studies on the development and organisation of the nervous system of Caenorhabditis elegans. University of Cambridge. 1987. Richard M. Durbin. cam.ac.uk. . 499178924.
  10. Durbin . R. M. . Richard M. Durbin. Burns . R. . Moulai . J. . Metcalf . P. . Freymann . D. . Blum . M. . Anderson . J. E. . Harrison . S. C. . Wiley . D. C. . Protein, DNA, and virus crystallography with a focused imaging proportional counter . Science . 232 . 4754 . 1127–1132 . 1986 . 3704639. 10.1126/science.3704639. 1986Sci...232.1127D .
  11. Durbin . R. . Richard M. Durbin. Willshaw . D. . 10.1038/326689a0 . An analogue approach to the travelling salesman problem using an elastic net method . Nature . 326 . 6114 . 689–691 . 1987 . 3561510 . 1987Natur.326..689D . 4321691 .
  12. Durbin . R. . Richard M. Durbin. Mitchison . G. . 10.1038/343644a0 . A dimension reduction framework for understanding cortical maps . Nature . 343 . 6259 . 644–647 . 1990 . 2304536 . 1990Natur.343..644D . 4352870 .
  13. c. Elegans Sequencing . C. . Genome sequence of the nematode C. Elegans: A platform for investigating biology . Science . 282 . 5396 . 2012–2018 . 1998 . 9851916 . 10.1126/science.282.5396.2012. 1998Sci...282.2012. .
  14. E. S.. Lander. Eric Lander. Linton . M. . Birren . B. . Nusbaum . C. . Zody . C.. Baldwin . J. . Devon . K. . Dewar . K. . Doyle . M. . Fitzhugh . W. . Funke . R. . Gage . D. . Harris . K. . Heaford . A. . Howland . J. . Kann . L. . Lehoczky . J. . Levine . R. . McEwan . P. . McKernan . K. . Meldrim . J. . Mesirov . J. P. . Miranda . C. . Morris . W. . Naylor . J. . Raymond . C. . Rosetti . M. . Santos . R. . Sheridan . A. . Sougnez . C. . 29. Initial sequencing and analysis of the human genome . Nature . 409 . 6822 . 860–921 . February 2001 . 0028-0836 . 11237011 . 10.1038/35057062. 2001Natur.409..860L. free .
  15. Simpson . J. T. . Durbin . R. . 10.1101/gr.126953.111 . Efficient de novo assembly of large genomes using compressed data structures . Genome Research . 22 . 3 . 549–556 . 2011 . 22156294 . 3290790 .
  16. Eilbeck . K. . Lewis . S. E. . Suzanna Lewis. Mungall . C. J. . Yandell . M. . Stein . L. . Lincoln Stein. Durbin . R. . Richard M. Durbin. Ashburner . M. . Michael Ashburner. The Sequence Ontology: A tool for the unification of genome annotations . Genome Biology . 6 . 5 . R44 . 2005 . 10.1186/gb-2005-6-5-r44 . 15892872 . 1175956 . free .
  17. Birney . E. . Ewan Birney. Durbin . R.. Richard M. Durbin . Using GeneWise in the Drosophila annotation experiment . Genome Research . 10 . 4 . 547–548 . 2000 . 10779496 . 310858 . 10.1101/gr.10.4.547.
  18. Sonnhammer . E. L. L. . Eddy . S. R. . Sean Eddy. Durbin . R. . Richard M. Durbin. 10.1002/(SICI)1097-0134(199707)28:3<405::AID-PROT10>3.0.CO;2-L . Pfam: A comprehensive database of protein domain families based on seed alignments . Proteins: Structure, Function, and Genetics . 28 . 3 . 405–420 . 1997 . 9223186 . 9569028 .
  19. Hubbard . T. . Tim Hubbard. Barker . D. . Birney . E.. Ewan Birney . Cameron . G. . Chen . Y. . Clark . L. . Cox . T. . Cuff . J. . Curwen . V. . Down . T. . Durbin . R. . Eyras . E. . Gilbert . J. . Hammond . M. . Huminiecki . L. . Kasprzyk . A. . Lehvaslaiho . H. . Lijnzaad . P. . Melsopp . C. . Mongin . E. . Pettett . R. . Pocock . M. . Potter . S. . Rust . A. . Schmidt . E. . Searle . S. . Slater . G. . Smith . J. . Spooner . W. . Stabenau . A. . The Ensembl genome database project . Nucleic Acids Research . 30 . 1 . 38–41 . 2002 . 11752248 . 99161 . 10.1093/nar/30.1.38.
  20. Li . H. . Heng Li. Coghlan . A. . Ruan . J. . Coin . L. J. . Hériché . J. K. . Osmotherly . L. . Li . R. . Liu . T. . Zhang . Z. . Bolund . L. . Wong . G. K. . Zheng . W. . Dehal . P. . Wang . J. . Durbin . R. . TreeFam: A curated database of phylogenetic trees of animal gene families . 10.1093/nar/gkj118 . Nucleic Acids Research . 34 . 90001 . D572–D580 . 2006 . 16381935 . 1347480 .
  21. Liti . G. . Carter . D. M. . Moses . A. M. . Warringer . J. . Parts . L. . James . S. A. . Davey . R. P. . Roberts . I. N. . Burt . A. . Koufopanou . 10.1038/nature07743 . V. . Tsai . I. J. . Bergman . C. M. . Bensasson . D. . O'Kelly . M. J. T. . Van Oudenaarden . A. . Barton . D. B. H. . Bailes . E. . Nguyen . A. N. . Jones . M. . Quail . M. A. . Goodhead . I. . Sims . S. . Smith . F. . Blomberg . A. . Durbin . R. . Louis . E. J. . Population genomics of domestic and wild yeasts . Nature . 458 . 7236 . 337–341 . 2009 . 19212322 . 2659681 . 2009Natur.458..337L .
  22. Warringer . J. . Zörgö . E. . Cubillos . F. A. . Zia . A. . Gjuvsland . A. . Simpson . J. T. . Forsmark . A. . Durbin . R. . Richard M. Durbin. Omholt . S. W. . Louis . E. J. . Liti . G. . Moses . A. . Blomberg . A. . Kruglyak . Leonid . Trait variation in yeast is defined by population history . PLOS Genetics . 7 . 6 . e1002111 . 2011 . 10.1371/journal.pgen.1002111 . 21698134 . 3116910 . free .
  23. Bentley . D. R. . Balasubramanian . S. . Swerdlow . H. P. . Smith . G. P. . Milton . J. . Brown . C. G. . Hall . K. P. . Evers . D. J. . Barnes . C. L. . Bignell . 10.1038/nature07517 . H. R. . Boutell . J. M. . Bryant . J. . Carter . R. J. . Keira Cheetham . R. . Cox . A. J. . Ellis . D. J. . Flatbush . M. R. . Gormley . N. A. . Humphray . S. J. . Irving . L. J. . Karbelashvili . M. S. . Kirk . S. M. . Li . H. . Liu . X. . Maisinger . K. S. . Murray . L. J. . Obradovic . B. . Ost . T. . Parkinson . M. L. . Pratt . M. R. . Accurate whole human genome sequencing using reversible terminator chemistry . Nature . 456 . 7218 . 53–59 . 2008 . 18987734 . 2581791 . 2008Natur.456...53B . 29 .
  24. Li . H. . Heng Li. Durbin . R. . Richard M. Durbin. 10.1038/nature10231 . Inference of human population history from individual whole-genome sequences . Nature . 475 . 7357 . 493–496 . 2011 . 21753753 . 3154645.
  25. Web site: https://web.archive.org/web/20151119115614/https://royalsociety.org/people/richard-durbin-11366/. 2015-11-19. Professor Richard Durbin FRS Fellow. Royal Society. London.
  26. Web site: Gabor Medal - Gabor Medallist 2017 . The Royal Society . 10 October 2017 . 2017.

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