Sulston, John E (1942– )

English geneticist who was awarded the 2002 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine (with South African molecular biologist and geneticist Sydney Brenner and US biologist and geneticist H Robert Horvitz) for his study of the mechanisms of genetic regulation of organ development and programmed cell death (apoptosis).

Sulston joined the Brenner group in 1969 and began studying the biology of the nematode worm, Caenorhabditis elegans, with particular attention to mapping cell lineage related to the cell division involved in tissue development. Sulston was able to show that apoptosis was integral to the normal process of cell differentiation and was able to identify the first gene that participated in apoptosis in the worm. This work was a starting point that eventually led to the sequencing of the complete genome of the nematode, the first animal genome to be determined, and provided the inspiration for the international Human Genome Project.

Sulston became a staff scientist at the Medical Research Council (MRC) Laboratory of Molecular Biology, in Cambridge, England, in 1969. In 1992 he helped in the foundation of the Sanger Centre, Cambridge, and was director there until 2000. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1986 and was knighted in 2001.