Antoine Danchin

Antoine Danchin (born 7 May 1944) is a French geneticist. He is best known for his research in several fields of biology, from the structure and function of adenylate cyclase, to modelling of learning in the nervous system and the early development of genomics and bioinformatics. He is the Chairman of the startup AMAbiotics which specialises in metabolic bioremediation and synthetic biology. He was the director of the Department Genomes and Genetics at the Institut Pasteur in Paris where he headed the Genetics of Bacterial Genomes Unit.

Antoine Danchin
Born (1944-05-07) 7 May 1944[1]
NationalityFrench
Alma materÉcole Normale Supérieure
Institut Henri Poincaré
Institut de Biologie Physico-Chimique
Scientific career
FieldsBioinformatics
InstitutionsInstitut de Biologie Physico-Chimique
École Polytechnique
Institut Pasteur
The University of Hong Kong
Websitewww.normalesup.org/~adanchin/

Early life and career

He was trained as a mathematician at the Institut Henri Poincaré and a physicist at the École Normale Supérieure. Working first with Mildred Cohn, Marianne Grunberg-Manago and Ionel Solomon in Nuclear Magnetic Resonance, Danchin became an experimental microbiologist in the early seventies. He created with Philippe Courrège and Jean-Pierre Changeux at the Institut de Biologie Physico-Chimique in Paris, France, a working seminar where they worked together on the construction of mathematical models of learning and memory.[2]

Interested in University training he created, with Maurice Guéron, the first semester of Biology at the École Polytechnique, and developed his teaching during four years. Among his first students one can find Daniel Kahn, Patrick Charnay, and many others. The main goal of his research has been to try to understand how genes can function collectively in the cell. This led him to work on regulation systems which control global gene expression in bacteria. Part of his work was devoted to the study of the enzymes that synthesize cyclic AMP. He established the reference classification of adenylate cyclases[3] after his laboratory successfully cloned and sequenced the genes of adenylyl cyclase toxins from the whooping cough agent[4] as well as from the agent of anthrax.[5] This work led him to trigger ethical reflections on the practices of molecular genetics and genomics at a time when this was not considered important.[6]

Danchin started in 1985 a collaboration with computer scientists for evaluation of artificial intelligence techniques to the study of integrated problems in molecular genetics.[7] This convinced him that it was time to investigate genomes as wholes, provided that an important effort in computer sciences was initiated in parallel (in silico biology). Early in 1987 he proposed that a sequencing program should be undertaken for Bacillus subtilis. This proposal was actualized by a European joint effort on this genome, starting in 1988. The complete sequence was published in 1997.[8] The first significant and unexpected discovery of this work was, in 1991, that many genes (at the time, half of the genes) were of completely unknown function. This led him to try to organize bioinformatics in France with the help of several colleagues at universities, CNRS and INRIA, through the creation of a nationwide group, GDR 1029 (1991–1995) and subsequently through the coordination of the bioinformatics programme of the Groupement de Recherche et d'Etudes des Genomes (1992–1996), then at the Comité de Coordination des Sciences du Vivant (1998–2000). Re-sequencing and re-annotation of the B. subtilis genome was completed in 2009 to update the sequence and annotation of this reference genome.[9]

In year 2000, Danchin created the HKU-Pasteur Research Centre in Hong Kong, meant to develop microbial genomics in the region, with the help of the Innovation and Technology Commission of the Hong Kong SAR government to develop bioinformatics (programme Biosupport).[10]

Danchin is now developing theoretical reflections and experiments in the domain of synthetic biology,[11] trying to make explicit the idea that cells behave as computers (Turing machines) making computers.[12] Together with Victor de Lorenzo, he created the free and open access journal Symplectic Biology, devoted to publishing innovative ideas in systems and synthetic biology.[13]

Antoine Danchin is the father of Raphael Danchin.

References
  1. "L'ACADÉMIE DES SCIENCES ÉLIT 17 NOUVEAUX MEMBRES" (PDF). Académie des sciences. 10 December 2013. Archived from the original (PDF) on 27 April 2014. Retrieved 13 June 2014.
  2. Changeux, J.-P.; Courrege, P.; Danchin, A. (1 October 1973). "A Theory of the Epigenesis of Neuronal Networks by Selective Stabilization of Synapses". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 70 (10): 2974–2978. Bibcode:1973PNAS...70.2974C. doi:10.1073/pnas.70.10.2974. PMC 427150. PMID 4517949.
  3. Danchin, A (1993). "Phylogeny of adenylyl cyclases". Advances in Second Messenger and Phosphoprotein Research. 27: 109–62. PMID 8418825.
  4. Glaser, P; Ladant, D; Sezer, O; Pichot, F; Ullmann, A; Danchin, A (January 1988). "The calmodulin-sensitive adenylate cyclase of Bordetella pertussis: cloning and expression in Escherichia coli". Molecular Microbiology. 2 (1): 19–30. doi:10.1111/j.1365-2958.1988.tb00003.x. PMID 2897067. S2CID 205365386.
  5. Escuyer, Vincent; Duflot, Edith; Sezer, Odile; Danchin, Antoine; Mock, Michèle (November 1988). "Structural homology between virulence-associated bacterial adenylate cyclases". Gene. 71 (2): 293–298. doi:10.1016/0378-1119(88)90045-5. PMID 2906312.
  6. Danchin, Antoine (February 2002). "Not every truth is good: The dangers of publishing knowledge about potential bioweapons". EMBO Reports. 3 (2): 102–104. doi:10.1093/embo-reports/kvf040. PMC 1083978. PMID 11839688.
  7. Gascuel, Olivier; Danchin, Antoine (December 1986). "Protein export in prokaryotes and eukaryotes: Indications of a difference in the mechanism of exportation". Journal of Molecular Evolution. 24 (1–2): 130–142. Bibcode:1986JMolE..24..130G. doi:10.1007/BF02099961. PMID 3104613. S2CID 931622.
  8. Kunst, F.; et al. (November 1997). "The complete genome sequence of the Gram-positive bacterium Bacillus subtilis" (PDF). Nature. 390 (6657): 249–256. Bibcode:1997Natur.390..249K. doi:10.1038/36786. PMID 9384377. S2CID 205025258.
  9. Barbe, Valérie; Cruveiller, Stéphane; Kunst, Frank; Lenoble, Patricia; Meurice, Guillaume; Sekowska, Agnieszka; Vallenet, David; Wang, Tingzhang; Moszer, Ivan; Médigue, Claudine; Danchin, Antoine (1 June 2009). "From a consortium sequence to a unified sequence: the Bacillus subtilis 168 reference genome a decade later". Microbiology. 155 (6): 1758–1775. doi:10.1099/mic.0.027839-0. PMC 2885750. PMID 19383706.
  10. "Welcome to the Biosupport web page". 19 September 2009. Archived from the original on 19 September 2009. Retrieved 28 May 2021.
  11. de Lorenzo, Víctor; Danchin, Antoine (September 2008). "Synthetic biology: discovering new worlds and new words: The new and not so new aspects of this emerging research field". EMBO Reports. 9 (9): 822–827. doi:10.1038/embor.2008.159. PMC 2529360. PMID 18724274.
  12. Danchin, Antoine (January 2009). "Bacteria as computers making computers". FEMS Microbiology Reviews. 33 (1): 3–26. doi:10.1111/j.1574-6976.2008.00137.x. PMC 2704931. PMID 19016882.
  13. "symplectic biology: rapid research notes in systems and synthetic biology" (PDF).

Selected works
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