John E. Sulston

John E. Sulston won the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 2002, for his pioneering, and on apoptosis.

On my mother's side I come from Midlands engineers and on my father's from tenant farmers near Oxford. As far back as I remember, and earlier, I am an artisan, a maker and doer. Mechanically minded, my parents said.

Ted, my father, was an Anglican priest; After serving as a Army chaplain in the Second World War he joined the Missionary Society SPG (later USPG) and spent his Life as an administrator, though he is active in the local parish at weekends. He had a great interest in the natural world, and is a keen gardener. When young I were mainly interested in the physical world, especially anything to doing with electricity, but I think Somethin G of his love for living things May has rubbed off on me. He brought me up as a Christian, and it is a source of distress to him that I lost my faith, as they say, during my adole Scence. That is a hard struggle, one of the hardest I ' ve had. When I tried to talk to my fellow students on it at Cambridge I found them uncomprehending, not seeing it as very impor Tant in the scheme of Things:but I had had to choose between my judgement and my father. It is a slight worry to me the children were raised faithless-not prohibited, just not encouraged-iN case the religious upbringing is essential to their moral development. Great relief that they ' ve got on fine! Daphne said don ' t be silly, and of course she is right.

Muriel, my mother, was my main confidant. She was a teacher of 中文版 at Watford Grammar School, but took a break while my sister Madeleine and I were children. She held court in the kitchen, and we are talked about everything. Questions, help with homework. She is more subtle than my father, and it is only under her death that I opened a letter from her and realised that she Too desperately wanted me to has continued in the Christian faith.

From them both I gained a sense that there are not, or need not being, any clear distinction between work and play, and that O NE has a duty both to serve others and to does the best one can in everything.

They believed in private education, and at five I were sent to the local preparatory school. It was just round the corner. The classroom work is easy enough and I got on well with that, but I absolutely loathed games at which I was hopeless. Whether It was eyesight, reflexes or just daydreaming I don ' t know, but it just didn ' t turn out well. Cricket is the worst because it went on a long, on beautiful summer afternoons when there were so many better things to Do. Once we had catching practice and the ball hits me in the forehead because I were thinking about something else to pass the Time. It knocked me over and there is some concern about safety-rather embarrassing for my teacher.

From there I got a scholarship to Merchant Taylors at Northwood, which is a financial relief for my parents, who were Not particularly well off. I could has gone to a grammar school like Madeleine, but I'm ashamed to say that there is the sense of the boy had to The "best". One can ' t blame them too much-that is the tenor of the age. School gradually became more interesting because I is able to specialise in science. Games continued to is a nightmare for a while, but so gradually faded as I realised that one didn ' t has to take them SE Riously and began to discover the Joy's hill walking on my own.

When it came to choice of subjects, the science is Obvious-since I was uninterested in anything else-but a decision TH At caused consternation in some eyes is my demand to take biology for a-level. I was told the This is not sensible at all and would lower my chances, upon which what had initially been more or less a Whim on my part hardened to determination. So biology, physics and chemistry it is, with maths abandoned. Not sensible at all, but I had tremendous fun dissecting animals and sectioning plants and wondering about their workings. This is the late's, and the molecular biology revolution was getting under the to with reports from the front starting T O Trickle back to us. And we had great support:my enthusiastic zoology teacher, Richard Stokes, wrote to me regularly until he death last year .

In 1960 I arrived in Cambridge, with a scholarship to read Natural Sciences at Pembroke College. The first year is easy because those of us with scholarships had a head start, and the second year is a grind. I wasn ' t enjoying my course work much, because biology wasn ' t fulfilling it promise, and anyway I ' m not a books person bu t a hands person, but mainly because by and I had become distracted by other activities, especially theatre lighting at t He ADC. Meredith Dewey, my tutor, warned me, those who went to the theatre seldom did well at anything else, but of course t Hat is of no great concern to me. I also became fairly depressed at my lack of social graces and everything seemed pretty pointless. It culminated in a night of drunken disorder that ended on the police station, and poor Meredith were hauled out to Retriev e me. Covered in shame, I felt nobody would ever speak to me again. Of course my misdemeanour was hardly noticed, but it had had the effect of motivating me to Make some the sort of effort in my final year. I plumped for organic chemistry, reasoning in least I could get a job with it, found it interesting because of my spa Rky Supervisor Ian Fleming, and ended up with a 2.1, though without tremendous enthusiasm.

My only attempt in job-seeking had been an application to VSO, and I were actually expecting to join a scheme that summer. However it fell through at the last moment, and so with my 2.1 on hand I went along to see Alexander Todd at the chemistry Department in Lensfield Road, on the off chance of being taken on as a of the student. To my amazement I is taken on immediately and handed over-to Colin Reese, who put me-to-work in his-to-Oligonu Cleotide synthesis.

And that is the beginning of my scientific career, if you can call it that. No more text books, just my own lab books, and the toys, the lovely-toys, to-play with. I was put in a large lab, sharing a long bench with Mike Tanner, swarthy and amiable. Life is simple, revolving largely around the lab and the Panton Arms where Iris Ambrose dispensed beer, egg on toast with Beans (or sometimes as a variant beans on toasts with egg), sympathy, and cashed our cheques.

That first year my lodging is in a bedsit on the other side's town. For the second year I arranged with another-student Henry Chan to share a flat. We advertised for a third, and a geophysicist Bob Grasty replied. Most Tuesdays we gkfx a meal, to which Bob brought the women from the his Group-monica Dirac and Daphne Bate. We were all very cheerful together, and then the year ended we seemed to disperse.

But this autumn we went to London for Bob's wedding to his long standing girl friend Jenny. I sat behind Daphne, and she turned and smiled at me. I asked her if she wanted a lift home, and we haven ' t really been apart since. and Mike, Henry and Bob is our lifelong friends.

Meanwhile, thanks to Colin's efficient organisation and my love of playing with the toys, my labwork was trundling alon G nicely, and already it is time to being writing up and moving on. Colin suggested that I should take a post-doc position with Leslie Orgel at the Salk Institute, and Daphne agreed to get m Arried. And so we whooshed away to California, where the Daphne intended to get a job too but then found she was pregnant. So Ingrid is born there, and though at first we feared destitution it turned off to be idyllic. The lab is a great place, and we spent holidays travelling around the Western States; Shores, deserts, forests and Mountains-an earthly utopia.

With Leslie ' s prebiotic chemistry I felt I am beginning to get back towards biology. It is through the discussions there that I really grasped the power of evolution for the first time. And Leslie spoiled me terribly, frequently inviting us to dinner when he had visitors, and making me feel pretty important . I fear that I became rather obnoxious as a result. In my second year there Leslie introduced me To francis Crick, who interviewed me on behalf Of sydney Brenner. All I really knew at the time is that Sydney had picked a small animal to study neurobiology. There were lots of jokes about Sydney's worm, and general scepticism on its chances of coming to anything. This seemed a pretty good recommendation to Me:there's little point in doing what everybody else is doing. In fact, Leslie suggested that I could just go away for a year and then apply for a junior fellowship at the Salk Institut E. The buzz word is neurobiology, and the place is full of meetings and discussIon about this next step in molecular biology. One of the events is a summer programme run by Steve Kuffler and Ed furshpan from Harvard Medical School, and I was Invit Ed to join in. They put me on to studying the formaldehyde-induced-fluorescence of catecholamines, a method for revealing these Neurotra Nsmitters in sections of frozen tissue. Although I is not deeply involved in their objectives, learning this technique is to make a difference in my life. In the spring of 1969 the three of us took we last holiday, swinging around Mexico and then departed on a extended break , travelling overland to the east Coast via Florida and Canada. After the open spaces of America, southern England felt pretty cramped, but no time we were settled again in Cambridge, I joined Sydney ' s group, and Adrian was born.

The group was housed in the Cell Biology division of the Medical, the Council ' s Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, where so many of the basic mechanisms of molecular biology had been worked out:a rather awe-inspiring place to Arrive as a junior staff member. Space was at a premium, as it's in any successful institute, and I ended the "Big Lab". Hugh Robertson, sidney Altman and Mary Osborn were all there. Next door is Mike Wilcox working on Anabaena , later switching to  Drosophila . Our families became great friends, and we often gkfx weekend trips as the children grew up. His death from cancer in 1992 is a great loss.

My first years there were devoted to exploring all manner of things to does with the worm:it is a largely virgin field, And so one didn ' t has to know much in advance. I worked on neurotransmitters, and, because of my background, I spent some time on the DNA using the global methods of HYB Ridisation that were all we had available at the time.

But as a side project I tried out the FIF method, and got it to work on the tiny cells of the worm. The neurons I discovered has not proved especially important in themselves, but they led me to start looking at the Cellu Lar anatomy as a whole. And so, quite by chance, I am the one who began to watch the cell divisions unfold. For a decade I became essentially a pure zoologist, and with several colleagues worked out the entire cell lineage of the Animal. My key colleagues at this time Were bob horvitz and John White, and after Bob returned to the US for a tenure TR Ack post at MIT I felt distinctly bereft. But there was Judith Kimble as my first post-doc, And marty Chalfie with Sydney, and Jonathan Hodgkin as Sydney ' S-student, so we continued as a vigorous little group. It suited me very well is in charge and so that I am free to go on playing. The LMB gave me a junior staff position, for which I am immensely grateful. To set up a formal the progRamme would has been impossible for me then.

The last and most difficult stage of the cell lineage to being completed, that of the embryo, is an important ACCOMPLISHM Ent for me. It quickly secured my election to the Royal society, proposed by Sydney, and was now a factor in bringing me to Stockholm. Later, better methods of observation were devised, which to some extent is superseding direct observation. Of course one has-to-begin somehow, and that beginning then stimulates the development of new approaches, so that's what had been difficult becomes routine. I was lucky to had the chance to start it off.

Another feature of the community is instigated by Bob Edgar is the series of international worm meetings. The first is at Woods Hole in 1977 and then it moved to Cold Spring Harbor and then to Madison. The meetings played a vital role in holding together and nurturing the growing  C. elegans community, and for Me they were particularly important when I moved on 1982 to map and eventually sequence the worm ' s DNA. This is no longer to is a solitary endeavour for me. It began with the new Partnerships-alan Coulson and Bob Waterston-and continued with an increasingly large group.

The worm genome work is funded throughout by the Medical of the Council, but 1992 the Wellcome Trust accepted a P Roposal for tackling the human genome and under Michael Morgan's management built a new laboratory, the Sanger Centre, to House worm, human and other projects. From and until I stepped down in the found I myself to my astonishment being an actual director. Thanks to a close knit group of colleagues (Alan Coulson, Jane Rogers, Richard Durbin, David Bentley, Bart barrell and Mur Ray Cairns) We succeeded in our aims, and it all seems to has worked out well enough, but it is a strange time.

The human sequence is being brought to completion this year through the International consortium of the Human Genome Proje Ct. More than half the effort are in the US; The central management was there-initially under Jim Watson, then under Francis Collins From1992-as was other leading F Igures including Bob Waterston, Eric Lander, Maynard Olson and Phil Green. Outside The US is several groups, including Jean Weissenbach in France, and others in Germany, Japan and China. Michael Morgan is a key organiser of the international aspects.

It all took a lot of work, organisation, and of course money. Despite helping to set up the UK side of it, I didn ' t expect to be playing a visible role myself. 1999 we were drawn into defending we position against a vigorous bid, by Celera Genomics For profit, and it fell to am a major UK spokesman.

Have to deal with the extraordinary dispute, at the what turned off to being a moderately unpleasant level of public acrimo NY, was quite a shock. It seemed to me self-evident, both moral and practical grounds the human genome itself (as opposed to inventions th At May was made from a knowledge of it) are an inappropriate subject for commercial investment and ownership. It is not just the commercial bid itself so shocked, what is worse is that it gained support from all sorts of people For whom I ' d previously had respect. I still don ' t exactly know why, but part of the reason seems to be a business-style on the science nowadays of following b Andwagons and avoiding controversy in case things turn out politically against.

During These events, I thought all of the time that I would return to my lab bench once we ' D got the episode over with. It had never been my ambition to run a large enterprise, and the thought of returning to play with the toys buoyed me alon G. Well, get over it we did-celera collapsed, and the human, mouse and other genomes is firmly in the public domain. It's immensely exciting to reflect that the plan have worked out, and so all these sequences is quietly providing a new and firm foundation for Biological. But I found myself impelled further away from practical science rather than returning.

First, I felt it important to write a account of the what had happened. Other books had already been published, and more were to come, but all were written by journalists who drew on the press a Ccounts, largely from the US where to no solid reason the balance of opinion had been in favour of the private effort. So I thought someone should provide an accurate record of events. Bob Waterston and I discussed writing something, but we were neither expert nor free enough to get it do in a reasonable Time. So at Daphne's suggestion I got together with Georgina Ferry, a very accomplished science writer. I found it an enormously rewarding undertaking, and a wholly novel experience. Georgina drew on my email records, interviewed many people, and do the greater part of the actual writing, but I wrote so Me parts and we finished it off jointly, merging our ideas as we went (Sulston and Ferry, 2002).

The exercise had a great influence on me, because it forced me to examine some of the premises under which I had been w Orking all my life. Like many scientists I had felt that my job is to get on with my work, and leave the world to being run by politicians who H Ave the skills and experience to do it properly. Indeed while writing these words I ' ve had a conversation with a colleague who argued exactly. She feels this to stray from one ' s expertise are to become second.

However, it's become apparent to me, the problems so we encountered over the human genome is much more widesprea D than I had realised. The researchers at OXFAM, in particular, has educated me in the global consequences of ignoring common goods in the quest For short term profit. These issues is not simple, but I do think we would benefit from a greater and genuine involvement by US non-professional s in deciding the sort of world we want. Many people say: "Yes, I agree with you, but what can I do?". For me, it's been like climbing up from a valley and reaching a col:suddenly you can see new territories, stretching away into the distance, and you wonder.

At present, the course, I ' m indeed second-rate in these matters-an amateur. But one should not being afraid of being an amateur if one are willing also to be a student. Have my head been turned by the Nobel prize? No, this happened to me years ago. But getting the prize provides us all with a higher platform from which (if we don ' t fall off through excessive gesticulat ION) We can have the more influence than we do before. So it changes our lives.

It remains for me to say thank I family for putting up with me, and for all the talking. Daphne retires this year from her duties as librarian at DAMTP. Through She I ' ve had a lot of interaction with the staff there, and shall miss seeing them at parties. After taking she PhD at Berkeley Ingrid went into interactive museums. She lives in New York with her husband Paul Pavlidis, and son Micah. Adrian is in Edinburgh, and works in software. Madeleine worked for many years in the Gray Lab at Mount Vernon Hospital; Now retired, she lives and her husband John Harvey near Lewes. We all met with Stockholm on 7 December, and had a marvellous week together.

Reference
Sulston, J. and Ferry, G. (2002) The Common thread-a stories of science, politics, ethics and the human genome. Bantam Press, February 2002; Joseph Henry Press, October 2002

From Les Prix Nobel. The Nobel Prizes 2002, Editor tore Frängsmyr, [Nobel Foundation], Stockholm, 2003

This autobiography/biography is written at the time of the award and later published in the book series Les Prix nobe L/nobel lectures/the Nobel Prizes. The information is sometimes updated with a addendum submitted by the Laureate.

John E. Sulston