Robin Holliday PhD, FRS, FAA (born 6 November 1932) is a British molecular biologist

Molecular biology

Molecular biology is the branch of biology that deals with the molecular basis of biological activity. This field overlaps with other areas of biology and chemistry, particularly genetics and biochemistry...

. He
proposed a mechanism of DNA-strand exchange that attempted to explain gene-conversion events that occur during meiosis in fungi. That model first proposed in 1964 and is now known as the Holliday Junction

Holliday junction

A Holliday junction is a mobile junction between four strands of DNA. The structure is named after Robin Holliday, who proposed it in 1964 to account for a particular type of exchange of genetic information he observed in yeast known as homologous recombination...

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Education and Employment

Robin Holliday holds a B.A. in Natural Sciences and a Ph.D. in Genetics from Cambridge University. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society

Royal Society

The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, known simply as the Royal Society, is a learned society for science, and is possibly the oldest such society in existence. Founded in November 1660, it was granted a Royal Charter by King Charles II as the "Royal Society of London"...

, a member of the European Molecular Biology Organization

European Molecular Biology Organization

EMBO stands for excellence in the life sciences. The EMBO mission is to enable the best science by supporting talented researchers, stimulating scientific exchange and advancing policies for a world-class European research environment....

, a Foreign Fellow of the Indian National Science Academy, and holds the 1987 Lord Cohen Medal

Lord Cohen Medal

The Lord Cohen Medal is a British medical award honouring individuals who "have made a considerable contribution to ageing research, either through original discoveries or in the promotion of the subject of gerontology in its broadest aspect"...

 for Gerontological research. He was formerly the Head of the Genetics Division, National Institute for Medical Research, (Medical Research Council), Mill Hill, London, UK, and is now retired Chief Research Scientist, CSIRO Division of BioMolecular Engineering, Sydney, Australia.

Epigenetic research

In 1975 he suggested that DNA methylation could be an important mechanism for the control of gene expression in higher organisms, and this has now become documented as a basic epigenetic mechanism in normal and also cancer cells. In 1988 he moved to a CSIRO laboratory in Sydney, Australia, where he continued to study ageing, and his book Understanding Ageing was published in 1995. He is a biogerontologist and has mentored several successful biogerontologists, including Suresh Rattan

Suresh Rattan

Suresh Rattan is a biogerontologist - a researcher in the field of biology of aging, biogerontology....

, Editor-in-Chief of the journal Biogerontology. The main focus of his experimental work was the epigenetic control of gene expression by DNA methylation in CHO

Chinese Hamster Ovary cell

Chinese hamster ovary cells are a cell line derived from the ovary of the Chinese hamster. They are often used in biological and medical research and commercially in the production of therapeutic proteins. They were introduced in the 1960s and grow as a cultured monolayer...

cells. These experiments provide direct evidence that DNA methylation is a primary cause of gene silencing in mammalian cells.

Publications

Robin Holliday is the author of numerous books and edited proceedings of conferences, including; The Science of Human Progress, Oxford University Press, 1981; Genes, Proteins and Cellular Aging, Van Nostrand Reinhold, New York, 1986; Understanding Aging, Cambridge University Press, 1995; Slaves and Saviours, Blackwall Books, 2000 and Why We Age, Springer Science + Business Media, 2007.

External links

• http://www.robinholliday.com/