Adrian Bird

Sir Adrian Bird
Born Adrian Peter Bird
(1947-07-03) 3 July 1947[1]
Fields
Institutions
Alma mater
Thesis The cytology and biochemistry of DNA amplification in the ovary of Xenopus laevis (1972)
Doctoral advisor Max Birnstiel[11][12]
Influences
Notable awards
Spouse Catherine Mary Abbott (m. 1993)[1]
Website
birdlab.bio.ed.ac.uk

Sir Adrian Peter Bird, CBE, FRS, FRSE is a British geneticist and Buchanan Professor of Genetics at the University of Edinburgh. Bird has spent much of his academic career in Edinburgh, from receiving his PhD in 1970 to working at the MRC Mammalian Genome Unit and later serving as director of the Wellcome Trust Centre for Cell Biology. His research focuses on understanding DNA methylation and CpG islands, and their role in diseases such as Rett syndrome.[15]

Education and early life

Bird was born in Wolverhampton, England, but from age four lived in the town of Kidderminster, near Birmingham.[16] He attended a grammar school in Hartlebury, achieving grades CCD for his A-level results. Whilst at school Bird played cricket and hockey for a local team.[16] Bird received his PhD from the University of Edinburgh in 1970, following undergraduate study of Biochemistry at the University of Sussex.[10]

Career

Following his PhD, Bird went on to postdoctoral research positions, first at Yale University with Joseph G. Gall, and then at the University of Zurich before returning to Edinburgh in 1975 to work at the MRC Mammalian Genome Unit, where he would stay for 11 years.[17][18] It was here that Bird, along with Edwin Southern, mapped the methylation status of CpG dinucleotides along ribosomal RNA in the African clawed frog.[17][19] From 1987 to 1990 Bird continued his research at the Research Institute of Molecular Pathology in Vienna.

In 1990, Adrian Bird became Buchanan Professor of Genetics at the University of Edinburgh. He helped create the Wellcome Trust Centre for Cell Biology, also in Edinburgh, and served as its director from 1999 until 2011, when he was succeeded by David Tollervey.[20] From 2000 to 2010, he was also a governor of the Wellcome Trust, serving as deputy chairman during the latter three years.[20][21]

Research

Adrian Bird's research has focused on CpG islands and their associated binding-factor MeCP2.[22] He led the team which first identified CpG islands—originally named "HpaII tiny fragments"[17]—in vertebrate genomes. These are short genomic regions with a high density of CpG dinucleotides, and are commonly found in an unmethylated state within or nearby to an active gene's promoter.

Bird's group discovered that the MeCP2 protein binds specifically to methylated CpG sites, and further that disruption of this interaction causes the autism spectrum disorder Rett syndrome. The Bird lab also implicated nuclear receptor co-repressor 1 as an important binding partner in the MeCP2/methyl-CpG interaction.[22]

In 2007 the Bird laboratory published a paper in the journal Science[23] describing a proof-of-principle that the murine equivalent of Rett syndrome could be successfully reversed in laboratory mice.[24] This was accomplished by reintroducing a functional MeCP2 gene and proved successful even when the condition was at an advanced stage, hinting at the possibility of a gene therapy approach to curing the human disease in the future.[24][25]

Awards and honours

Bird has received a number of awards, such as the 2011 Gairdner Foundation International Award and 2012 Royal Society GlaxoSmithKline Prize, and he was knighted in the 2014 New Year Honours list. In 2013, he was named a Thomson Reuters Citation Laureate.

Bird was awarded the Gabor Medal in 1999 "in recognition of his pioneering work in the study of global mechanisms by which transcription of the mammalian genome is regulated and for his exploration into the molecular basis of fundamental biological mechanisms, particularly his development of ways of analysing methylation patterns of eukaryotic DNA using endonucleases and the discovery of and continued research into a new class of DNA sequences found in all vertebrates".[26] He received the Louis-Jeantet Prize for Medicine in the same year,[21] and was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the Queen's Birthday Honours in 2005. In 2011 he was a recipient of the Gairdner Foundation International Award, "for his pioneering discoveries on DNA methylation and its role in gene expression."[27] The following year Bird won the 2012 GlaxoSmithKline Prize.[20]

In 2013, Bird was tipped as a potential winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for "fundamental discoveries concerning DNA methylation and gene expression"[28] though the prize later went to James Rothman, Randy Schekman and Thomas C. Südhof. He was knighted in the 2014 New Year Honours for services to science.[29][30][31] Bird received the 2013 BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in Biomedicine "for his discoveries in the field of epigenetics".[18][32] Bird was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1989, his nomination reads:

“ Adrian Bird is the leading authority on DNA methylation in animal cells. He demonstrated a rolling circle mechanism for ribosomal gene amplification. He showed that DNA methylation sites can be mapped using restriction enzymes and thus showed semi-conservative copying of methylation patterns. He showed convincingly that the doublet CpG is a source of mutation in vertebrates which led to the use of 'GpG' restriction enzymes to detect polymorphisms linked to genetic diseases. He discovered unmethylated 'HTF' islands at the 5i ends of housekeeping genes. This discovery has allowed new strategies for mapping and identifying genes and it has allowed Bird to propose that the unmethylated HTF islands identify DNA sequences to be kept constantly available within the nucleus.[14] ”

In 2016 he was elected as a foreign associate of the National Academy of Sciences.[33] Also in 2016 he received the Shaw Prize together with Huda Y. Zoghbi.[34] In 2017 Bird will receive the Charles Rudolphe Brupbacher Prize.

Bird is a trustee of the charitable organisation Cancer Research UK and of the Rett Syndrome Research Trust.[20][35] He also serves as a Governance Board Member of the Edinburgh Cancer Research Centre.[36]

Personal life

Adrian Bird is married to fellow geneticist Cathy Abbott and has four children.[16][17] At age 66, Bird was quoted as having no plans to retire, saying "we [the research group] are still funded well and our work is still published in journals and as long as that continues, so will I."[16]

References

  1. 1 2 BIRD, Sir Adrian Peter. ukwhoswho.com. Who's Who. 2015 (online Oxford University Press ed.). A & C Black, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing plc. (subscription required)
  2. ↑ Jaenisch, R.; Bird, A. (2003). "Epigenetic regulation of gene expression: how the genome integrates intrinsic and environmental signals". Nature Genetics. 33 Suppl (3s): 245–254. PMID 12610534. doi:10.1038/ng1089.
  3. ↑ Bird, A (2007). "Perceptions of epigenetics". Nature. 447 (7143): 396–8. PMID 17522671. doi:10.1038/nature05913.
  4. ↑ Bird, A. P. (1986). "CpG-rich islands and the function of DNA methylation". Nature. 321 (6067): 209–13. PMID 2423876. doi:10.1038/321209a0.
  5. ↑ Bird, A (2002). "DNA methylation patterns and epigenetic memory". Genes & Development. 16 (1): 6–21. PMID 11782440. doi:10.1101/gad.947102.
  6. ↑ Bird, A. P.; Wolffe, A. P. (1999). "Methylation-induced repression--belts, braces, and chromatin". Cell. 99 (5): 451–4. PMID 10589672. doi:10.1016/s0092-8674(00)81532-9.
  7. ↑ Lewis, J. D.; Meehan, R. R.; Henzel, W. J.; Maurer-Fogy, I; Jeppesen, P; Klein, F; Bird, A (1992). "Purification, sequence, and cellular localization of a novel chromosomal protein that binds to methylated DNA". Cell. 69 (6): 905–14. PMID 1606614. doi:10.1016/0092-8674(92)90610-O.
  8. ↑ Nan, X; Ng, H. H.; Johnson, C. A.; Laherty, C. D.; Turner, B. M.; Eisenman, R. N.; Bird, A (1998). "Transcriptional repression by the methyl-CpG-binding protein MeCP2 involves a histone deacetylase complex". Nature. 393 (6683): 386–9. PMID 9620804. doi:10.1038/30764.
  9. ↑ Cheval, H; Guy, J; Merusi, C; De Sousa, D; Selfridge, J; Bird, A (2012). "Postnatal inactivation reveals enhanced requirement for MeCP2 at distinct age windows". Human Molecular Genetics. 21 (17): 3806–14. PMC 3412380 Freely accessible. PMID 22653753. doi:10.1093/hmg/dds208.
  10. 1 2 "Professor Adrian Bird - Associate Faculty". Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute. Archived from the original on 2015-04-07.
  11. 1 2 Bird, A. (2007). "Q&A: Adrian Bird". Current Biology. 17 (11): R393. PMID 17600901. doi:10.1016/j.cub.2007.03.018.
  12. ↑ Schatz, G. (2015). "Max L. Birnstiel (1933–2014)". Cell. 160: 11–12. doi:10.1016/j.cell.2014.12.030.
  13. ↑ "Professor Sir Adrian Bird CBE FRS FRSE FMedSci". Archived from the original on 2015-04-22.
  14. 1 2 "EC/1989/04: Bird, Adrian Peter". London: The Royal Society. Archived from the original on 21 April 2015.
  15. ↑ Adrian Bird's publications indexed by the Scopus bibliographic database, a service provided by Elsevier. (subscription required)
  16. 1 2 3 4 Tomaney, William (2014-01-09). "Geneticist raised in Kidderminster happy with knighthood". The Shuttle. Newsquest. Archived from the original on 2014-02-02.
  17. 1 2 3 4 Bird, A (2009). "On the track of DNA methylation: An interview with Adrian Bird by Jane Gitschier". PLoS Genetics. 5 (10): e1000667. PMC 2753650 Freely accessible. PMID 19834538. doi:10.1371/journal.pgen.1000667.
  18. 1 2 "BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Awards: Biomedicine 2013". BBVA Foundation. Retrieved 2014-01-31.
  19. ↑ Bird, A. P.; Southern, E. M. (1978). "Use of restriction enzymes to study eukaryotic DNA methylation: I. The methylation pattern in ribosomal DNA from Xenopus laevis". Journal of Molecular Biology. 118 (1): 27–47. PMID 625056. doi:10.1016/0022-2836(78)90242-5.
  20. 1 2 3 4 School of Biology Sciences (2014-01-07). "Knighthood for Adrian Bird". University of Edinburgh. Retrieved 2014-01-18.
  21. 1 2 "Elite award for Adrian Bird, Buchanan Professor of Genetics at The University of Edinburgh". Edinburgh Science Triangle. 2011-03-30. Archived from the original on 7 January 2014. Retrieved 2014-01-06.
  22. 1 2 "Adrian Bird". Wellcome Trust Centre for Cell Biology. Retrieved 2014-01-06.
  23. ↑ Guy, J; Gan, J; Selfridge, J; Cobb, S; Bird, A (2007). "Reversal of neurological defects in a mouse model of Rett syndrome". Science. 315 (5815): 1143–7. PMID 17289941. doi:10.1126/science.1138389.
  24. 1 2 "Professor Bird knighted in New Year’s Honours List". Reverse Rett. Retrieved 2014-01-06.
  25. ↑ McLaren, C. (2010). "Adrian Bird lab: Our research". University of Edinburgh. Retrieved 2014-01-06.
  26. ↑ "Gabor previous winners 2005 – 1989". The Royal Society. Archived from the original on 11 March 2008. Retrieved 5 February 2009.
  27. ↑ "Gairdner Awards – Adrian Peter Bird, PhD". Archived from the original on 2013-10-17.
  28. ↑ Gray, Richard (23 September 2013). "Higgs Boson scientist tipped to win Nobel Prize". The Telegraph. Retrieved 30 December 2013.
  29. ↑ "No. 60728". The London Gazette (Supplement). 31 December 2013. p. 1.
  30. ↑ "Met Office chief scientist becomes Dame in honours list". BBC News. 30 December 2013. Retrieved 30 December 2013.
  31. ↑ "The New Year's Honours 2014". Cabinet Office. Gov.uk. 30 December 2013. Retrieved 30 December 2013.
  32. ↑ "European award for celebrated scientist". The University of Edinburgh. Retrieved 2014-01-29.
  33. ↑ National Academy of Sciences Members and Foreign Associates Elected, News from the National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Sciences, May 3, 2016, retrieved 2016-05-14.
  34. ↑ Shaw Prize 2016
  35. ↑ "Elite award for Adrian Bird". University of Edinburgh. 2011-05-11. Archived from the original on 7 January 2014. Retrieved 2014-01-06.
  36. ↑ Governance Board Members of the Edinburgh Cancer Research Centre. Retrieved 2014-01-07.
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