British computational biologist
Richard Michael Durbin
FRS
[17]
(born 1960)
[15]
is a British
computational biologist
[18]
[2]
and
Al-Kindi
Professor of
Genetics
at the
University of Cambridge
.
[20]
[21]
[22]
[23]
He also serves as an
associate faculty member
at the
Wellcome Sanger Institute
where he was previously a senior group leader.
[24]
[25]
[26]
[27]
Education
[
edit
]
Durbin was educated at
The Hall School, Hampstead
[
citation needed
]
and
Highgate School
in London.
[15]
After competing in the 1978/9
International Mathematical Olympiad
,
[28]
he went on to study at the
University of Cambridge
graduating in 1982
[29]
with a
second class honours degree
in the
Cambridge Mathematical Tripos
. After graduating, he continued to study for a PhD
[3]
at
St John's College, Cambridge
[15]
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
.
[3]
Career and research
[
edit
]
Durbin's early work included developing the primary instrument software for one of the first
X-ray crystallography
area detectors
[30]
and the
MRC
Biorad
confocal microscope, alongside contributions to neural modelling.
[31]
[32]
He then led the informatics for the
Caenorhabditis elegans
genome project,
[33]
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.
[34]
He has developed numerous methods for computational
sequence analysis
.
[35]
[36]
These include gene finding (e.g. GeneWise) with
Ewan Birney
[37]
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
[16]
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
,
[38]
the genome database
Ensembl
,
[39]
and the gene family database
TreeFam
.
[9]
More recently Durbin has returned to sequencing and has developed low coverage approaches to population genome sequencing, applied first to yeast,
[40]
[41]
and has been one of the leaders in the application of new sequencing technology to study human genome variation.
[42]
[43]
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
[
edit
]
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
[17]
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.
[44]
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:
Durbin is distinguished for his powerful contribution to computational biology. In particular, he played a leading role in establishing the new field of bioinformatics. This allows the handling of biological data on an unprecedented scale, enabling genomics to prosper. He led the analysis of the
C. elegans
genome, and with Thierry-Mieg developed the database software
AceDB
. In the international genome project he led the analysis of protein coding genes. He introduced key computational tools in software and data handling. His
Pfam
database allowed the
identification of domains in new protein sequences
; it used hidden Markov models to which approach generally he brought rigour and which led to
covariance
models for
RNA
sequence.
[45]
Personal life
[
edit
]
Durbin is the son of
James Durbin
and is married to
Julie Ahringer
, a scientist at the
Gurdon Institute
. They have two children.
[15]
References
[
edit
]
- ^
"EMBO welcomes 66 leading life scientists as members"
.
biochemist.org
.
- ^
a
b
Richard M. Durbin
publications indexed by
Google Scholar
- ^
a
b
c
Durbin, Richard
(1987).
Studies on the development and organisation of the nervous system of Caenorhabditis elegans
.
cam.ac.uk
(PhD thesis). University of Cambridge.
OCLC
499178924
.
EThOS
uk.bl.ethos.233920
.
- ^
Birney, Ewan
(2000).
Sequence alignment in bioinformatics
.
cam.ac.uk
(PhD thesis). University of Cambridge.
OCLC
894597337
.
EThOS
uk.bl.ethos.621653
.
- ^
Eddy, S. R.; Mitchison, G; Durbin, R (1995). "Maximum discrimination hidden Markov models of sequence consensus".
Journal of Computational Biology
.
2
(1): 9?23.
doi
:
10.1089/cmb.1995.2.9
.
PMID
7497123
.
- ^
Eddy, S. R.; Durbin, R (1994).
"RNA sequence analysis using covariance models"
.
Nucleic Acids Research
.
22
(11): 2079?88.
doi
:
10.1093/nar/22.11.2079
.
PMC
308124
.
PMID
8029015
.
- ^
Li, H.
;
Durbin, R.
(2009).
"Fast and accurate short read alignment with Burrows?Wheeler transform"
.
Bioinformatics
.
25
(14): 1754?1760.
doi
:
10.1093/bioinformatics/btp324
.
PMC
2705234
.
PMID
19451168
.
- ^
Li, H.
; Ruan, J.;
Durbin, R.
(2008).
"Mapping short DNA sequencing reads and calling variants using mapping quality scores"
.
Genome Research
.
18
(11): 1851?1858.
doi
:
10.1101/gr.078212.108
.
PMC
2577856
.
PMID
18714091
.
- ^
a
b
Li, H.
; Coghlan, A.; Ruan, J.; Coin, L. J.; Heriche, J. K.; Osmotherly, L.; Li, R.; Liu, T.; Zhang, Z.; Bolund, L.; Wong, G. K.; Zheng, W.; Dehal, P.; Wang, J.; Durbin, R. (2006).
"TreeFam: A curated database of phylogenetic trees of animal gene families"
.
Nucleic Acids Research
.
34
(90001): D572?D580.
doi
:
10.1093/nar/gkj118
.
PMC
1347480
.
PMID
16381935
.
- ^
"Heng Li Credits Durbin Pedigree in Accepting Franklin Award"
. bio-itworld.com. Archived from
the original
on 27 February 2013.
- ^
Bateman, A.
; Coin, L.;
Durbin, R.
; Finn, R. D.; Hollich, V.; Griffiths-Jones, S.; Khanna, A.; Marshall, M.; Moxon, S.; Sonnhammer, E. L.; Studholme, D. J.; Yeats, C.;
Eddy, S. R.
(2004).
"The Pfam protein families database"
.
Nucleic Acids Research
.
32
(Database issue): 138D?1141.
doi
:
10.1093/nar/gkh121
.
ISSN
0305-1048
.
PMC
308855
.
PMID
14681378
.
- ^
Bateman, A.
;
Birney, E.
; Cerruti, L.;
Durbin, R.
; Etwiller, L.;
Eddy, S.
; Griffiths-Jones, S.; Howe, K.; Marshall, M.; Sonnhammer, E. L. (2002).
"The Pfam protein families database"
.
Nucleic Acids Research
.
30
(1): 276?280.
doi
:
10.1093/nar/30.1.276
.
PMC
99071
.
PMID
11752314
.
- ^
Bateman, A; Birney, E; Durbin, R; Eddy, S. R.; Howe, K. L.; Sonnhammer, E. L. (2000).
"The Pfam protein families database"
.
Nucleic Acids Research
.
28
(1): 263?6.
doi
:
10.1093/nar/28.1.263
.
PMC
102420
.
PMID
10592242
.
- ^
Bateman, A.;
Birney, E.
;
Durbin, R.
;
Eddy, S.
; Finn, R.; Sonnhammer, E. (1999).
"Pfam 3.1: 1313 multiple alignments and profile HMMs match the majority of proteins"
.
Nucleic Acids Research
.
27
(1): 260?262.
doi
:
10.1093/nar/27.1.260
.
PMC
148151
.
PMID
9847196
.
- ^
a
b
c
d
e
f
Anon (2016).
"Durbin, Richard Michael"
.
Who's Who
(online edition via
Oxford University Press
ed.). A & C Black.
doi
:
10.1093/ww/9780199540884.013.U45024
.
(Subscription or
UK public library membership
required.)
- ^
a
b
Durbin, Richard M.
;
Eddy, Sean R.
;
Krogh, Anders
; Mitchison, Graeme (1998),
Biological Sequence Analysis: Probabilistic Models of Proteins and Nucleic Acids
(1st ed.), Cambridge, New York:
Cambridge University Press
,
ISBN
0-521-62971-3
,
OCLC
593254083
- ^
a
b
"Professor Richard Durbin FRS Fellow"
. London:
Royal Society
. Archived from
the original
on 19 November 2015.
- ^
anon.
"Durbin, Richard"
.
sanger.ac.uk
. Retrieved
2 January
2019
.
- ^
Richard M. Durbin
at
DBLP
Bibliography Server
- ^
"Honorary Professors"
.
Cambridge University Reporter
.
CXLV
(5). University of Cambridge. 12 December 2014. Archived from
the original
on 15 March 2015.
- ^
Anon.
"Durbin Group ? Department of Genetics"
.
gen.cam.ac.uk
. Retrieved
2 January
2019
.
- ^
Anon (27 September 2017).
"Professor Richard Durbin ? Department of Genetics"
.
gen.cam.ac.uk
. Retrieved
2 January
2019
.
- ^
"Dr Richard Durbin ? Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute"
. Archived from
the original
on 28 February 2012.
- ^
Durbin, Richard M.'s publications
indexed by the
Scopus
bibliographic database.
(subscription required)
- ^
Richard Durbin archive collection
Richard Durbin entry in the Wellcome Library archive.
- ^
Richard M. Durbin
publications from
Europe PubMed Central
- ^
Richard M. Durbin's results
at
International Mathematical Olympiad
- ^
"The BioInformer nr. 1, 1997 ? Interview with Dr. Richard Durbin"
. Archived from
the original
on 2 October 2011
. Retrieved
30 July
2011
.
- ^
Durbin, R. M.
; Burns, R.; Moulai, J.; Metcalf, P.; Freymann, D.; Blum, M.; Anderson, J. E.; Harrison, S. C.; Wiley, D. C. (1986). "Protein, DNA, and virus crystallography with a focused imaging proportional counter".
Science
.
232
(4754): 1127?1132.
Bibcode
:
1986Sci...232.1127D
.
doi
:
10.1126/science.3704639
.
PMID
3704639
.
- ^
Durbin, R.
; Willshaw, D. (1987). "An analogue approach to the travelling salesman problem using an elastic net method".
Nature
.
326
(6114): 689?691.
Bibcode
:
1987Natur.326..689D
.
doi
:
10.1038/326689a0
.
PMID
3561510
.
S2CID
4321691
.
- ^
Durbin, R.
; Mitchison, G. (1990). "A dimension reduction framework for understanding cortical maps".
Nature
.
343
(6259): 644?647.
Bibcode
:
1990Natur.343..644D
.
doi
:
10.1038/343644a0
.
PMID
2304536
.
S2CID
4352870
.
- ^
c. Elegans Sequencing, C. (1998). "Genome sequence of the nematode C. Elegans: A platform for investigating biology".
Science
.
282
(5396): 2012?2018.
Bibcode
:
1998Sci...282.2012.
.
doi
:
10.1126/science.282.5396.2012
.
PMID
9851916
.
- ^
Lander, E. S.
; 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.; et al. (February 2001).
"Initial sequencing and analysis of the human genome"
(PDF)
.
Nature
.
409
(6822): 860?921.
Bibcode
:
2001Natur.409..860L
.
doi
:
10.1038/35057062
.
ISSN
0028-0836
.
PMID
11237011
.
- ^
Simpson, J. T.; Durbin, R. (2011).
"Efficient de novo assembly of large genomes using compressed data structures"
.
Genome Research
.
22
(3): 549?556.
doi
:
10.1101/gr.126953.111
.
PMC
3290790
.
PMID
22156294
.
- ^
Eilbeck, K.;
Lewis, S. E.
; Mungall, C. J.; Yandell, M.;
Stein, L.
;
Durbin, R.
;
Ashburner, M.
(2005).
"The Sequence Ontology: A tool for the unification of genome annotations"
.
Genome Biology
.
6
(5): R44.
doi
:
10.1186/gb-2005-6-5-r44
.
PMC
1175956
.
PMID
15892872
.
- ^
Birney, E.
;
Durbin, R.
(2000).
"Using GeneWise in the Drosophila annotation experiment"
.
Genome Research
.
10
(4): 547?548.
doi
:
10.1101/gr.10.4.547
.
PMC
310858
.
PMID
10779496
.
- ^
Sonnhammer, E. L. L.;
Eddy, S. R.
;
Durbin, R.
(1997). "Pfam: A comprehensive database of protein domain families based on seed alignments".
Proteins: Structure, Function, and Genetics
.
28
(3): 405?420.
doi
:
10.1002/(SICI)1097-0134(199707)28:3<405::AID-PROT10>3.0.CO;2-L
.
PMID
9223186
.
S2CID
9569028
.
- ^
Hubbard, T.
; Barker, D.;
Birney, E.
; 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. (2002).
"The Ensembl genome database project"
.
Nucleic Acids Research
.
30
(1): 38?41.
doi
:
10.1093/nar/30.1.38
.
PMC
99161
.
PMID
11752248
.
- ^
Liti, G.; Carter, D. M.; Moses, A. M.; Warringer, J.; Parts, L.; James, S. A.; Davey, R. P.; Roberts, I. N.; Burt, A.; Koufopanou, 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. (2009).
"Population genomics of domestic and wild yeasts"
.
Nature
.
458
(7236): 337?341.
Bibcode
:
2009Natur.458..337L
.
doi
:
10.1038/nature07743
.
PMC
2659681
.
PMID
19212322
.
- ^
Warringer, J.; Zorgo, E.; Cubillos, F. A.; Zia, A.; Gjuvsland, A.; Simpson, J. T.; Forsmark, A.;
Durbin, R.
; Omholt, S. W.; Louis, E. J.; Liti, G.; Moses, A.; Blomberg, A. (2011). Kruglyak, Leonid (ed.).
"Trait variation in yeast is defined by population history"
.
PLOS Genetics
.
7
(6): e1002111.
doi
:
10.1371/journal.pgen.1002111
.
PMC
3116910
.
PMID
21698134
.
- ^
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, 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.; et al. (2008).
"Accurate whole human genome sequencing using reversible terminator chemistry"
.
Nature
.
456
(7218): 53?59.
Bibcode
:
2008Natur.456...53B
.
doi
:
10.1038/nature07517
.
PMC
2581791
.
PMID
18987734
.
- ^
Li, H.
;
Durbin, R.
(2011).
"Inference of human population history from individual whole-genome sequences"
.
Nature
.
475
(7357): 493?496.
doi
:
10.1038/nature10231
.
PMC
3154645
.
PMID
21753753
.
- ^
"Gabor Medal - Gabor Medallist 2017"
. The Royal Society. 2017
. Retrieved
10 October
2017
.
- ^
"Library and Archive Catalogue"
. London: The Royal Society
. Retrieved
14 November
2013
.
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