The Genetics Society of America annually honors members who have made outstanding contributions to genetics. The Thomas Hunt Morgan Medal recognizes a lifetime contribution to the science of genetics. The Genetics Society of America Medal recognizes particularly outstanding contributions to the science of genetics over the past 25 years. The George W. Beadle Medal recognizes distinguished service to the field of genetics and the community of geneticists. The Genetics Society of America Award for Excellence in Education recognizes individuals or groups who have had a significant, sustained impact on genetics education at any level, from kindergarten through graduate school and beyond. A new award, The Novitski Prize, was established to recognize an extraordinary level of creativity and intellectual ingenuity in solving significant problems in biological research through the application of genetic methods. We are pleased to announce the 2008 awards.
THE history of genetics, in modern terms, has largely been spent trying to annotate the genomes of a small number of model organisms and of humans. Consequently, it is fitting that Michael Ashburner has received the 2008 Thomas Hunt Morgan Medal. Not only has Ashburner truly made “a lifetime of contributions” to almost every facet of genetics, but, perhaps more than anyone else, he has clarified the nature of the annotation problem in complex metazoans and blazed the path we are now following to its ultimate solution. It is further appropriate that he receive an award bearing the name of T. H. Morgan. The concept of analyzing all of an organism's genes, of lining them up on chromosome maps, did not start with the relatively recent advent of whole-genome sequencing. Genome annotation began in the earliest days of genetics, within the confines of Morgan's own Fly Room, and was nurtured for years by his coworkers, especially Calvin Bridges. Ashburner has truly been carrying on Morgan's own work.
In 1964, when Ashburner entered graduate school at Cambridge University, cytogenetics was one of the few available techniques for examining entire genomes with a significant degree of resolution. By analyzing Drosophila polytene chromosomes, especially in the late larval and prepupal salivary gland, he could observe the comings and goings of chromosome puffs, local chromatin decondensations postulated to coincide with the activity of single genes. For the next 10 years, Ashburner concentrated intensely on these indicators of changing gene activity, mapping their location and comparing different developmental stages, and the effects of experimental treatments. It would be hard to overstate how well these studies were carried out. What Bridges had been to the polytene maps Ashburner was to the puffs. This first ever Drosophila genome expression database guided later analysis using molecular tools.
Much has rightly been made of Ashburner's deduction that early ecdysone puffs encode regulators of middle and late puff genes. By that time he had returned to Cambridge from postdoctoral studies in Herschel Mitchell's lab and was beginning a steady rise from the rank of University Demonstrator to Professor of Biology. His insights made steroid-induced metamorphosis an irresistible early focus for the young molecular biologists who stalked the Drosophila genome in the early 1980s. Another popular choice was the heat-shock response, where Ashburner's puffing studies were equally cogent and influential. A detailed molecular understanding of the ecdysone puff genes was ultimately obtained as a result of more than 20 years of study by David Hogness, Carl Thummel, and others. In a foreshadowing of just how difficult it is to annotate genomes, however, the full significance of the puffing patterns was never fully resolved by subsequent genomic analysis. Puffs are not just genes, as was originally believed; some contain multiple activated genes, some contain only an induced RNA, while all contain many nonactivated genes.
Polytene chromosome bands provide an even higher degree of resolution on the fundamental structure of the genome than puffs. If puffs were not genes, then surely bands each contained a gene. Ashburner adopted the prevelant “saturation” mutagenesis approach that had initially seemed to support the notion. For nearly 20 years he analyzed and correlated complementation groups and phenotypes associated with every detectable genetic element within the “Adh region” of the second chromosome, including more than 650 chromosome breakpoints. These studies identified fundamentally important genes, such as the germ-cell regulator, vasa, and revealed a wealth of detail regarding the genetic organization of a metazoan eukaryotic chromosome. Finally, in 1999, sequencing and transcript analysis revealed that 229 genes resided within 69 polytene chromosome bands. This was the first and remains the most detailed correlation of genome content and genetic function within a metazoan genomic region. Bands remain a mystery, leading Ashburner to quote A. A. Milne: “Before beginning a Hunt, it is wise to ask someone what you are looking for before you begin looking for it.”
Like Bridges, Ashburner is passionate about the importance of sharing information among the research community. He coedited a widely used series “The Genetics and Biology of Drosophila” and was a perennial instructor in a course on Drosophila Genetics at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratories that minted new Drosophila researchers by the dozen. His 1331-page Grey Book (1989), now a classic, contains detailed analyses of virtually all aspects of Drosophila genetics, along with much about development and evolution. He wrote it entirely on his own, and one imagines him doing so at one sitting, as he can expound at length on any of these subjects and their history.
The advent of genomics made it possible for Ashburner to understand, organize, and communicate genetic information on an unprecedented scale. An inveterate collector of everything about Drosophila and its genome, Ashburner became conversant with large database structures before anyone had heard of the word “bioinformatics.” Consequently, it is not surprising that he played a leading role in guiding the complex transition from documenting Drosophila genetic information using paper to providing an Internet-accessible database to the world community, as a cofounder of FlyBase. Few developments in the history of Drosophila genetics have had a greater positive impact on the daily lives of Drosophila researchers.
Gradually, Ashburner's annotation efforts expanded outward from the Drosophila genome to those of other species. Long a proponent of linking genetic information between different model organisms, he was a founder of the Gene Ontology Consortium, which develops controlled vocabularies that facilitate such communication. In 1994 he went on 50% leave to work at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory and at the European Bioinformatics Institute in Hinxton, where he served as Joint Head from 1998 to 2001. As a founding member of the European Drosophila Genome Project and consultant to the Berkeley Drosophila Genome Project, Ashburner was instrumental in seeing the Drosophila sequence through to completion and annotation at the Celera Jamboree. His early interest in comparing bands and Adh regions between different Drosophila species culminated in the recent completion of 12 Drosophila genome sequences.
Morgan's style of research was highly collaborative and interactive. The tradition of sharing information and reagents born there has remained a striking characteristic of the Drosophila community and contributed immensely to the fly's success as a model organism. Ashburner has embodied and championed these ideals throughout his career. As a result of his quest to annotate the fly, he now knows more about Drosophila than any other person who has every lived. Although born too late to be part of Morgan's Fly Room, where he would have fitted in perfectly, Ashburner connects its traditions to the genomic future of all genetics research. The Genetics Society is proud to name Michael Ashburner as the 2008 Thomas Hunt Morgan award winner.
Michael Ashburner was born on May 23, 1942, in Brighton, England. He obtained his B.A. (1964), M.A. (1968), and Ph.D. (1968) degrees from the University of Cambridge. After postdoctoral studies in Herschel Mitchell's laboratory at CalTech (1968–1969), Ashburner returned to Cambridge as University Demonstrator (1968–1973), University Lecturer (1973–1980), and Reader in Developmental Genetics (1980–1991). In 1991 he was appointed Professor of Biology in the Department of Genetics and Professorial Fellow of Churchill College. He also held a 50% appointment as Senior Scientist, European Molecular Biology Laboratory (1994–1998), and as Research Coordinator (1994–1998), Joint Head (1998–2001), and Visiting Group Leader (2001–present) at the European Bioinformatics Institute, Hinxton, Cambridge. He has been Miller Professor at the University of California at Berkeley and visiting professor at the University of California Medical School, San Francisco; University of Crete, Greece; and University of Pavia, Italy. Ashburner was elected Fellow in the Royal Society (1990) and as Foreign Honorary Member, American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1993); Member, Academia Europaea (1989); and Member, European Molecular Biology Organization (1977). He served as President of the British Genetics Society (1997–2000). He has received several awards including the Benjamin Franklin Award, Bioinformatics Organization (2006); the Genetics Society of America Medal (2005); the George Beadle Award, Genetics Society of America (1999); and the G. J. Mendel Award, Academy of Sciences, Czech Republic (1998). Ashburner has been awarded honorary degrees by the University of Crete, Greece (2002), and the University of Edinburgh (2003). He has also served on the Scientific Advisory Boards or as a consultant to numerous BioTech companies.
Figure 1.
Michael Ashburner