Jean Thomas (biochemist)

Dame Jean Olwen Thomas, DBE FRS FMedSci MAE FLSW (born 1 October 1942) is a Welsh biochemist, former Master of St Catharine's College, Cambridge,[4] and Chancellor of Swansea University.[5]

Dame Jean Thomas
DBE FRS FMedSci MAE FLSW
Chancellor of Swansea University
Assumed office
2018
Preceded byRhodri Morgan
38th Master of St Catharine's College, Cambridge
In office
2007–2016
Preceded byDavid Ingram
Succeeded byMark Welland
Personal details
Born
Jean Olwen Thomas

1942 (age 80–81)[1]
OccupationBiochemist
Alma materUniversity College of Swansea[2]
AwardsEMBO Member
Scientific career
InstitutionsUniversity of Cambridge
MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology
ThesisHydroxyl-carbonyl interaction in cyclic peptides and depsipeptides (1969)
Doctoral studentsCaroline S. Hill[3]
Websitewww.caths.cam.ac.uk/directory/professor-dame-jean-thomas

Early life and education

Thomas was born in Treboeth, Swansea to John Robert and Lorna (née Harris) Thomas, and she attended Llwyn-y-Bryn High School for Girls. She continued her education at University College of Swansea where she received a first class Bachelor of Science degree in chemistry in 1964 followed by a PhD in 1967. Her thesis was on Hydroxyl-carbonyl interaction in cyclic peptides and depsipeptides.[2]

Career and research

After her PhD in 1967, Thomas remained with Cambridge at Darwin College until 1969. During this time, she held a Beit Memorial Fellowship for Medical Research at the Medical Research Council (MRC) Laboratory of Molecular Biology (LMB), a lab dedicated to understanding biological processes in order to solve major problems in human disease.[6] She then served as a member of the university academic staff as well as a Fellow of New Hall, now Murray Edwards College, where she acted as vice president from 1983 to 1987. In 1985, during her time as vice president of New Hall, she received her degree of Doctor of Science from the University of Cambridge.[7]

Thomas is a professor emerita of macromolecular biochemistry at Cambridge and has been a professor there since 1991. She acted as chairman of the Cambridge Centre for Molecular Recognition between 1993 and 2003.[7] In 2007, Thomas became a fellow of St. Catharine's College, and in 2016, she became an honorary fellow. She was elected as the 38th master of St. Catharine's College in 2007, making her the first female master since the college was founded in 1473. Elected by the president and fellows of the college, she remained master until 2016, when she was succeeded by Professor Sir Mark Welland.[8] A scholarship fund called the Jean Thomas PhD Award was created in her honour by alumnus of St. Catharine's Peter Dawson. It grants one fully funded PhD studentship per year to a student at St. Catharine's.[9]

Her other contributions to external organizations include serving on the Science and Engineering Research Council, the Council of the Royal Society, the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, the Scientific Advisory Committee of the Lister Institute of Preventive Medicine, and the Scientific Advisory Committee of the Imperial Cancer Research Fund. Starting in 1994, she served as a trustee of the British Museum for ten years.[7] In October 2000, she became a governor of the Wellcome Trust, the world's largest biomedical research charity.[10] In 2002 she was elected a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences (FMedSci)[1] and she is also a Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales (FLSW).[11] Between 2000 and 2005, she served as president of the Biochemical Society and was granted honorary membership of that body in 2008.[7] The Wolfson Foundation, an independent charity that supports excellence in science and education, appointed her as a trustee in November 2013.[12] In 2014, Thomas was elected as the second President of the Royal Society of Biology, succeeding Nancy Rothwell of the University of Manchester.[13] In 2018 she was appointed Chancellor of Swansea University.[5]

In addition to the many positions she has held, Thomas became an honorary fellow of the University of Wales Swansea in 1987 and of Cardiff University in 1998. She was also granted honorary doctorates in science from the University of Wales in 1992 and from the University of East Anglia in 2002. In 2009, she was made an honorary fellow of Aberystwyth University in recognition of her distinguished career as a Welsh scientist.[7]

Work in biochemistry

Her career as a biochemist has been heavily focused on studying the structure and dynamics of chromatin and its role in the repression and activation of genes via regulatory proteins. She was the first person to isolate and characterize the histone octamer, which ultimately and led to the universal nucleosome model for chromatin structure formulated by Roger D. Kornberg. Kornberg would eventually be awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work on gene transcription and translation.[14]

Thomas's recent work has focused on the in-depth understanding of chromatin proteins, such as high-mobility group box 1 protein (HMGB1) and histone H1, and their interactions with DNA. In 2007, her research team used NMR mapping to better define the negative regulation of the HMGB1-DNA interaction that was suspected to be largely controlled by the acidic tail of HMGB1. They found that regardless of the length of the acidic tail, it makes extensive contacts with the DNA-binding regions of the two tandem HMG-boxes in HMGB1.[15] A year later, she published a paper describing the opposing effects of H1 and HMGB1 on the nucleosome. Histone H1 was shown to stabilize the structure by winding two turns of linker DNA around the octamer while HMGB1 destabilized the nucleosome by bending adjacent DNA. NMR spectroscopy was again used to show that H1 binds to the acidic tail of HMGB1 via its basic C-terminus, thus halting the HMGB1-DNA interaction.[16] She later described the structure of these interactions as collapsed and sandwich-like, suggesting that it is important for the dynamic activity of the DNA-binding proteins.[17]

Thomas also found that HMGB1 plays a role as a chaperone in the binding of transcription factors like p53 to DNA. In 2012, again using NMR spectroscopy, her team solved the structure of the A-box/p53 complex formed by the interaction between the N-terminus of p53 and a single HMG-box of HMGB1.[18] Recently, she studied proteins from Drosophila melanogaster and maize that are analogous to HMGB1 in order to describe a simpler, general mechanism of the self-inhibitive behavior of the DNA-binding regions of the HMG-boxes in HMGB1.[19] She currently continues to lead a team of researchers in the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Cambridge.[20]

Awards and honours

Outside of her direct involvement at Cambridge, Thomas has received numerous awards and honours throughout her career. In 1982, she was elected as a member of the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO), and in 1986 she was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS).[21] She served as the biological secretary and vice-president of the Royal Society for five years beginning in 2008.[22] She became a member of the Academia Europaea (MAE) in 1991, which aims to promote learning, education, and research.[23] She was awarded Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1993, and in 2005 she was awarded Dame Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (DBE) in the New Year's Honours List for her services to biochemistry.[7]

References
  1. Anon (2017). "Thomas, Dame Jean Olwen". Who's Who (online Oxford University Press ed.). Oxford: A & C Black. doi:10.1093/ww/9780199540884.013.37399. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  2. Thomas, Jean Olwen (1969). Hydroxyl-carbonyl interaction in cyclic peptides and depsipeptides. jisc.ac.uk (PhD thesis). University College of Swansea. OCLC 502626391. EThOS uk.bl.ethos.639195.
  3. Hill, Caroline Susan (1988). Structural studies of sea urchin sperm chromatin. lib.cam.ac.uk (PhD thesis). University of Cambridge. OCLC 53497646. EThOS uk.bl.ethos.305554.
  4. St Catharine’s College, Cambridge elects new Master (23 March 2006)
  5. "Swansea University appoints Dame Jean Thomas as chancellor". BBC News. 8 January 2018. Retrieved 9 January 2018.
  6. "About LMB". MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology.
  7. "Professor Dame Jean Thomas / Wayne Powell".
  8. "The Next Master of St. Catharine's".
  9. "Jean Thomas PhD Award".
  10. "About Us".
  11. "Professor Dame Jean Thomas".
  12. "Professor Dame Jean Thomas Appointed as a Trustee".
  13. "Society Welcomes New President".
  14. "2006 Nobel Prize for Chemistry" (PDF).
  15. Watson, M; Stott, K; Thomas, JO (14 December 2007). "Mapping intramolecular interactions between domains in HMGB1 using a tail-truncation approach". Journal of Molecular Biology. 374 (5): 1286–97. doi:10.1016/j.jmb.2007.09.075. PMID 17988686.
  16. Cato, L; Watson, M; Stott, K; Thomas, JO (31 December 2008). "The interaction of HMGB1 and linker histones occurs through their acidic and basic tails". Journal of Molecular Biology. 384 (5): 1262–72. doi:10.1016/j.jmb.2008.10.001. PMID 18948112.
  17. Stott, K; Watson, M; Howe, F; Grossman, JG; Thomas, JO (12 November 2010). "Tail-mediated collapse of HMGB1 is dynamic and occurs via differential binding of the acidic tail to the A and B domains". Journal of Molecular Biology. 403 (5): 706–22. doi:10.1016/j.jmb.2010.07.045. PMID 20691192.
  18. Rowell, JP; Simpson, KL; Stott, K; Watson, M; Thomas, JO (5 December 2012). "HMGB1-facilitated p53 DNA binding occurs via HMG-Box/p53 transactivation domain interaction, regulated by the acidic tail". Structure. 20 (12): 2014–24. doi:10.1016/j.str.2012.09.004. PMID 23063560.
  19. Stott, K; Watson, M; Bostock, MJ; Mortensen, SA; Travers, A; Grasser, KD; Thomas, JO (24 October 2014). "Structural insights into the mechanism of negative regulation of single-box high mobility group proteins by the acidic tail domain". The Journal of Biological Chemistry. 289 (43): 29817–26. doi:10.1074/jbc.M114.591115. PMC 4207994. PMID 25190813.
  20. "Jean Thomas: Department of Biochemistry".
  21. Anon (1986). "Dame Jean Thomas DBE FMedSci FRS". royalsociety.org. Royal Society. One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from the royalsociety.org website where:
    "All text published under the heading 'Biography' on Fellow profile pages is available under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.” --Royal Society Terms, conditions and policies at the Wayback Machine (archived 2016-11-11)
  22. "Professor Dame Jean Thomas".
  23. "The Academy of Europe – Academia Europaea".

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