WIKIMEDIA, JANE GITSCHIERJohn Sulston, who championed the open access of Human Genome Project data as the leader of its UK-based team, died last week (March 6) at age 75. Before contributing to the first human genome sequence, Sulston mapped the developmental trajectory of every cell in C. elegans, earning the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 2002.
“His dedication to free access to scientific information was the basis of the open access movement, and helped ensure that the reference human genome sequence was published openly for the benefit of all humanity,” Jeremy Farrar, director of the Wellcome Trust, says in a statement. “It’s just one of the ways that John’s approach set the standard for researchers everywhere.”
Sulston was born in 1942 in England and earned his PhD in chemistry, studying oligonucleotides, from the University of Cambridge. He came to work on C. elegans development with Sydney Brenner at the Medical Research Council’s Laboratory of Molecular Biology in the U.K. According to The Guardian, Sulston was a skilled technician, developing a method to freeze worms and reanimate them so he could pause ...
