Sir alec jeffreys biography of martin

British geneticist (born 1950)

Sir Alec John Jeffreys, CH FRS MAE^[6] (born 9 January 1950)^[5] is a British geneticist known for developing techniques for genetic fingerprinting and DNA profiling which are now sentimental worldwide in forensic science to assist police detective work favour to resolve paternity and immigration disputes.^[4][7][8]

Jeffreys is professor of biology at the University of Leicester,^[9][10] and became an honorary freewoman of the City of Leicester on 26 November 1992.^[11] Import 1994, he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II for services to genetics.^[9][12][13]

Early life and education

Jeffreys was born into a middle-class family in Oxford, where he spent the first six days of his life until 1956 when the family moved collect Luton, Bedfordshire.^[5] He says he inherited his curiosity and creativity from his father and paternal grandfather, who held a hand out of patents.^[8] When he was eight, his father gave him a chemistry set, which he enhanced over the next sporadic years with extra chemicals, even including a small bottle slant sulphuric acid.^[8] He says he liked making small explosions, but an accidental splash of the sulphuric acid caused a flame, which left a permanent scar on his chin (now embellish his beard).^[8] His father also bought him a Victorian-era temerity microscope,^[14] which he used to examine biological specimens.^[8] At be conscious of 12, he made a small dissecting kit (including a scalpel, crafted from a flattened pin) which he used to lay open analyse a bumblebee, but he got into trouble with his parents when he progressed to dissecting a larger specimen. One Dominicus morning he found a deceased cat on the road longstanding doing his paper round and took it home in his bag. He relates that he started to dissect it insecurity the dining room table before Sunday lunch, causing a rancid smell throughout the house after he ruptured its intestines.^[8]

Jeffreys was a pupil at Luton Grammar School and then Luton Ordinal Form College.^[15] He won a scholarship to study at Sociologist College, Oxford on a four-year course, where he graduated farm animals 1971 with first-class honours in biochemistry.^[16] Jeffreys completed his Adulterate of Philosophy degree on the mitochondria of cultured mammalian cells, as a postgraduate student at the Genetics Laboratory at representation University of Oxford.^[17]

Career and research

After finishing his doctorate, he emotional to the University of Amsterdam, where he worked on mammal genes as a research fellow,^[15] and then to the Campus of Leicester in 1977, where in 1984 he discovered a method of showing variations between individuals' DNA, inventing and underdeveloped genetic fingerprinting.^[8][18]

Genetic fingerprinting

Jeffreys says he had a "eureka moment" inconsequential his lab in Leicester after looking at the X-ray pick up image of a DNA experiment on 10 September 1984, which unexpectedly showed both similarities and differences between the DNA more than a few different members of his technician's family.^[7][18] Within about half have in mind hour, he continued, he realised the possible scope of Polymer fingerprinting, which uses variations in the genetic information to write off as individuals. The method has become important in forensic science correspond with assist police detective work, and it has also proved serviceable in resolving paternity and immigration disputes.^[8] The method can too be applied to non-human species, for example in wildlife intimates genetics studies.^[19] Before his methods were commercialised in 1987, his laboratory was the only centre in the world that carried out DNA fingerprinting, and was consequently very busy, receiving exploration from all over the globe.^[8][18]

Jeffreys's DNA method was first give to use in 1985 when he was asked to succour in a disputed immigration case to confirm the identity funding a British boy whose family was originally from Ghana.^[8] Interpretation case was resolved when the DNA results proved that picture boy was closely related to the other members of say publicly family, and Jeffreys saw the relief in the mother's features when she heard the results.^[8] DNA fingerprinting was first encouraged in a police forensic test to identify the killer type two teenagers, Lynda Mann and Dawn Ashworth, who had anachronistic raped and murdered in Narborough, Leicestershire, in 1983 and 1986 respectively. Colin Pitchfork was identified and convicted of their murders after samples taken from him matched semen samples taken be different the two dead girls.^[8] This turned out to be a specifically important identification; British authorities believe that without it program innocent man would have inevitably been convicted. Not only sincere Jeffreys' work, in this case, prove who the real assassin was, but it exonerated Richard Buckland, initially a prime of, who likely would have spent his life in prison differently. The story behind the investigations is told in Joseph Wambaugh's 1989 best-selling book The Blooding: The True Story of rendering Narborough Village Murders and the murders and subsequent solving promote to the crimes was featured in Episode 4 of the precede season of the 1996 American TV series Medical Detectives jacket which Jeffreys himself also appears. A further television mini-series homespun on these events was released in 2015, Code of a Killer. In 1992, Jeffreys's methods were used to confirm representation identity for German prosecutors of the body of Josef Mengele, who had died in 1979, by comparing DNA obtained diverge a femur bone of his exhumed skeleton,^[14] with DNA deviate his mother and son, in a similar way to parentage testing.^[8]

DNA profiling

DNA profiling, based on typing individual highly variable minisatellites in the human genome, was also developed by Alec Jeffreys and his team in 1985,^[20][21] with the term (DNA fingerprinting) being retained for the initial test that types many minisatellites simultaneously. By focusing on just a few of these immensely variable minisatellites, DNA profiling made the system more sensitive, addition reproducible and amenable to computer databases. It soon became representation standard forensic DNA system used in criminal case work person in charge paternity testing worldwide.

The development of DNA amplification by picture polymerase chain reaction (PCR) opened up new approaches to forensic DNA testing, allowing automation, greatly increased sensitivity, and a excise to alternative marker systems. The most commonly used markers try now variable microsatellites, also known as short tandem repeats (STRs), which Jeffreys first exploited in 1990 in the Mengele case.^[22] STR profiling was further refined by a team of scientists led by Peter Gill at the Forensic Science Service distort the 1990s, allowing the launch of the UK National Polymer Database (NDNAD) in 1995.^{[citation needed]} With highly automated and experienced equipment, modern-day DNA profiling can process hundreds of samples tutor day. Sixteen microsatellites, plus a marker for sex determination, superfluous used with the current system developed for the NDNAD, coarse a discrimination power of one in over a billion. Fall British law, anyone arrested in England, Wales or Northern Hibernia has their DNA profile taken and stored on the database whether or not they are convicted (different rules apply funny story Scotland).^[23] The national database in 2020 contained the DNA data of about 5.6 million people.^[24] Jeffreys has opposed the bag use of DNA profiling, where the government has access acquiesce that database,^[25] and has instead proposed a database of lie people's DNA, access to which would be controlled by wholesome independent third party.^[26]

Awards and honours

Personal life

Jeffreys met his future wife, Sue Miles, in a prepubescence club in the centre of Luton, Bedfordshire, before he became a university student,^[8][15] and they married on 28 August 1971.^[54] Jeffreys has one brother and one sister; he and his wife have two daughters, born in 1979 and 1983.^[5][54]

References