Steven Salzberg

Steven Salzberg
Institutions University of Maryland, College Park, The Institute for Genomic Research, Johns Hopkins University
Alma mater Yale, Harvard
Notable students Olga Troyanskaya[1]

Steven Salzberg is an American Biologist and Computer Scientist who since 2011 has been a Professor of Medicine and Biostatistics in the Institute of Genetic Medicine at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. From 2005-2011 he was the Director of the Center for Bioinformatics and Computational Biology at the University of Maryland, College Park, where he was also the Horvitz Professor of Computer Science. He was previously the head of the Bioinformatics department at The Institute for Genomic Research, one of the world's largest genome sequencing centers, and prior to that he was a computer science professor at Johns Hopkins University. He graduated from Yale University in 1980 and received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1989.

Dr. Salzberg together with David Lipman started the Influenza Genome Sequencing Project in 2003, a project to sequence and make available the genomes of thousands of influenza virus isolates[2][3]. He has been a leader in the field of gene finding and created the GLIMMER[4] program for bacterial gene finding as well as several programs for finding genes in animals, plants, and other organisms. He has also been a leader in genome assembly research and is one of the initiators of the open source AMOS project. He was a participant in the human genome project[5] as well as many other genome projects, including the malaria genome (Plasmodium falciparum) and the genome of the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana. In 2001-2002, he and his colleagues sequenced the anthrax that was used in the 2001 anthrax attacks. They published their results in the journal Science in 2002[6]. These findings helped the FBI track the source of the attacks to a single vial at Ft. Detrick in Frederick, Maryland.

Salzberg has also been a vocal advocate in favor of the teaching of evolution in schools in the U.S. and has authored editorials and appeared in print media on this topic.

References

  1. ^ Mullins, J.; Morrison Mckay, B. (2011). "International Society for Computational Biology Honors Michael Ashburner and Olga Troyanskaya with Top Bioinformatics/Computational Biology Awards for 2011". PLoS Computational Biology 7 (6): e1002081. doi:10.1371/journal.pcbi.1002081. PMC 3107244. PMID 21673867. http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?tool=pmcentrez&artid=3107244.  edit
  2. ^ Ghedin, E.; Sengamalay, N. A.; Shumway, M.; Zaborsky, J.; Feldblyum, T.; Subbu, V.; Spiro, D. J.; Sitz, J. et al. (2005). "Large-scale sequencing of human influenza reveals the dynamic nature of viral genome evolution". Nature 437 (7062): 1162–1166. Bibcode 2005Natur.437.1162G. doi:10.1038/nature04239. PMID 16208317.  edit
  3. ^ Holmes, E. C.; Ghedin, E.; Miller, N.; Taylor, J.; Bao, Y.; St. George, K.; Grenfell, B. T.; Salzberg, S. L. et al. (2005). "Whole-Genome Analysis of Human Influenza A Virus Reveals Multiple Persistent Lineages and Reassortment among Recent H3N2 Viruses". PLoS Biology 3 (9): e300. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.0030300. PMC 1180517. PMID 16026181. http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?tool=pmcentrez&artid=1180517.  edit
  4. ^ Delcher, A.; Harmon, D.; Kasif, S.; White, O.; Salzberg, S. (1999). "Improved microbial gene identification with GLIMMER". Nucleic Acids Research 27 (23): 4636–4641. doi:10.1093/nar/27.23.4636. PMC 148753. PMID 10556321. http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?tool=pmcentrez&artid=148753.  edit
  5. ^ Venter, J. C.; Adams, M.; Myers, E.; Li, P.; Mural, R.; Sutton, G.; Smith, H.; Yandell, M. et al. (2001). "The Sequence of the Human Genome". Science 291 (5507): 1304–1351. doi:10.1126/science.1058040. PMID 11181995.  edit
  6. ^ Read, T. D.; Salzberg, S.; Pop, M.; Shumway, M.; Umayam, L.; Jiang, L.; Holtzapple, E.; Busch, J. et al. (2002). "Comparative Genome Sequencing for Discovery of Novel Polymorphisms in Bacillus anthracis". Science 296 (5575): 2028–2033. doi:10.1126/science.1071837. PMID 12004073.  edit

Sources and further reading