Sir John Edward Sulston CH FRS MAE was born on March 27, 1942, and passed away on March 6, 2018. He was a British biologist and teacher who received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2002. He shared this award with Sydney Brenner and Robert Horvitz for their research on how cells develop and the complete set of genes in the worm Caenorhabditis elegans. This work was conducted at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, a research center. Sulston also led studies on the human genome and served as Chair of the Institute for Science, Ethics and Innovation at the University of Manchester. He believed that science should benefit everyone, including supporting free access to scientific information and opposing the practice of preventing companies from owning genes or controlling genetic technologies.
Early life and education
John Sulston was born in Fulmer, Buckinghamshire, England, to Arthur Edward Aubrey Sulston and Josephine Muriel Frearson, who was born Blocksidge. His father worked as an Anglican priest and managed a religious organization called the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. His mother was an English teacher at Watford Grammar School but left her job to care for Sulston and his sister, Madeleine. She taught them at home until Sulston turned five. At age five, he began attending York House School, a local preparatory school. He did not enjoy playing games but became interested in science early on, enjoying activities like dissecting animals and cutting plants into pieces to study their parts and how they work. Sulston earned a scholarship to Merchant Taylors' School in Northwood and later attended Pembroke College, Cambridge, where he graduated in 1963 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Natural Sciences, specializing in Chemistry. After being interviewed by Alexander Todd, he joined the Department of Chemistry at the University of Cambridge and completed his PhD in 1966 for research on nucleotide chemistry.
Career
Between 1966 and 1969, he worked as a research scientist at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California. His academic advisor, Colin Reese, arranged for him to work with Leslie Orgel, who helped change the direction of his scientific career. Orgel introduced him to Francis Crick and Sydney Brenner, who were working in Cambridge. This experience made him more interested in biological research.
Although Orgel wanted Sulston to stay with him, Sydney Brenner encouraged Sulston to return to Cambridge to study the nervous system of a small worm called Caenorhabditis elegans at the Medical Research Council (MRC) Laboratory of Molecular Biology (LMB). Sulston soon created a complete map of the worm’s neurons. He continued studying its DNA and later worked on sequencing its entire genome. In 1998, the full genome sequence was published in collaboration with the Genome Institute at Washington University in St. Louis, making C. elegans the first animal to have its complete genome sequenced.
Sulston played a key role in both the C. elegans and human genome sequencing projects. He successfully argued that sequencing the C. elegans genome would prove that large-scale genome projects were possible. As the C. elegans genome project continued, the Human Genome Project began. At this time, Sulston became director of the newly created Sanger Centre (named after Fred Sanger), located in Cambridgeshire, England.
In 2000, after the "working draft" of the human genome was completed, Sulston retired from directing the Sanger Centre. With Georgina Ferry, he wrote a book titled The Common Thread: A Story of Science, Politics, Ethics, and the Human Genome (2002), which described his research career leading to the human genome sequence.
Sulston was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1986. He was also elected an EMBO Member in 1989 and received the George W. Beadle Award in 2000. In 2001, he gave the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures on The Secrets of Life. In 2002, he won the Dan David Prize and the Robert Burns Humanitarian Award. Later, he shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Sydney Brenner and Robert Horvitz, both of whom he had worked with at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology (LMB), for their discoveries about "genetic regulation of organ development and programmed cell death."
One of Sulston’s most important contributions during his time at the LMB was to determine the exact order in which cells in C. elegans divide. He and his team successfully mapped the entire embryonic cell lineage of the nematode.
In 2004, Sulston received the Golden Plate Award from the American Academy of Achievement. In 2006, he was awarded the George Dawson Prize in Genetics by Trinity College Dublin. In 2013, he received the Royal Society of New Zealand’s Rutherford Memorial Lecture, which he gave on the topic of population pressure.
He was appointed a Member of the Order of the Companions of Honour (CH) in the 2017 Birthday Honours for his work in science and society. On 23 October 2017, he was awarded the Cambridge Chemistry Alumni Medal.
Sulston was a strong advocate against the patenting of human genetic information.
Personal life
John Sulston met Daphne Bate, a research assistant in Cambridge. They married in 1966 just before moving to the United States for research jobs after completing their doctorates. Together, they had two children. Their first child, Ingrid, was born in La Jolla in 1967, and their second child, Adrian, was born later in England. The couple lived in Stapleford, Cambridgeshire, where they were active members of the local community. John often volunteered at the local library and helped with work projects at Magog Down. He also served as a Trustee of Cambridge Past, Present and Future.
Although raised in a Christian family, Sulston stopped believing in religion during his time as a student in Cambridge and remained an atheist for the rest of his life. He was a strong supporter of Humanists UK. In 2003, he signed the Humanist Manifesto along with 21 other Nobel Prize winners.
Sulston believed that scientific information should be freely available to the public. He supported making genome data accessible without cost and called it "totally immoral and disgusting" to make money from scientific research. He also wanted changes to patent laws and argued that restrictions on medicines, such as the anti-viral drug Tamiflu made by Roche, hurt patients who depend on these drugs.
In December 2010, Sulston supported Julian Assange by acting as a bail surety for him, as stated by Assange’s attorney, Mark Stephens. In June 2012, Sulston had to give back £15,000 of the £20,000 he had pledged because Assange had entered the embassy of Ecuador to avoid being judged by English courts.
Sulston died on 6 March 2018 from stomach cancer at the age of 75.