Prof. David C. Baulcombe

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  www.americanscientist.org/science/pub/5-pioneering-scie - [Cached Version]
  Published on: 9/16/2008    Last Visited: 9/16/2008  

  The Briton is David C. Baulcombe, 56, of the University of Cambridge.
  
  Read more ...

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  westchesterny.illumen.org/newsArticle.jsf?documentId=2c - [Cached Version]
  Published on: 9/15/2008    Last Visited: 9/16/2008  

  The Briton is David C. Baulcombe, 56, of the University of Cambridge.
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  Dr. Baulcombe, in a seemingly unrelated line of research in England, expanded the scope of micro-RNAs' crucial functions by finding that they silenced genes in plants.He called them silencing RNAs and showed that earlier experiments were not intended to find micro-RNAs because their size was much smaller than scientists had imagined.

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  www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-03/uod-pis031408.p - [Cached Version]
  Published on: 3/14/2008    Last Visited: 4/23/2008  

  Three of the world's pioneers in small RNA research--Victor Ambros, Gary Ruvkun and David Baulcombe--will lecture on their recent discoveries at a special half-day symposium at the University of Delaware from 9 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., Wednesday, April 16, in the Gore Recital Hall of the Roselle Center for the Arts.
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  Through their research, Ambros, Ruvkun and Baulcombe discovered tiny strands of RNA on the order of 20 nucleotides long, which can turn off genes, preventing them from functioning.
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  David Baulcombe earned a bachelor's degree in botany from Leeds University and a doctorate from the University of Edinburgh.He was a postdoctoral researcher at McGill University and at the University of Georgia before establishing a research group at the Plant Breeding Institute in Cambridge.In 1988, he joined the Sainsbury Laboratory, where he did much of his world-renowned work.He is moving his laboratory to the University of Cambridge, where he is now professor of botany.
  
  His research interests include the effect of RNA silencing on growth, development, evolution and defense in plants, and the development of virus-resistant crop plants.
  
  Baulcombe is a Fellow of the Royal Society and a foreign associate member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences.His awards include the Royal Medal, the Massry Prize, the M. W. Beijerinck Virology Prize, the Wiley Prize in Biomedical Science, the Ruth Allen Award and the Kumho Science International Award in Plant Molecular Biology and Biotechnology.

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  www.gmwatch.org/profile.asp?page=B - [Cached Version]
  Published on: 2/23/2008    Last Visited: 2/23/2008  

  David Baulcombe

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  www.0800easymeds-uk.co.uk/ContactUs.asp - [Cached Version]
  Published on: 4/24/2007    Last Visited: 4/24/2007  

  The European Commission has committed 11.8 million euros to this four-year Integrated Project funded under the Sixth Framework Programme."RNA silencing, also called RNA interference, is the cell's natural ability to turn off genes", said Professor David Baulcombe of the Sainsbury Laboratory at the John Innes Centre. [click link for full article]

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  lp.kciinvesting.com/3792_15089.htm - [Cached Version]
  Published on: 9/4/2007    Last Visited: 6/4/2008  

  And it was only about three years before that when the magazine published a paper about a radically new mechanism that cells can use to control protein production that was discovered by plant geneticists David Baulcombe and Andrew Hamilton.

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  www.gmwatch.org/p2temp2.asp?aid=25&page=1&op=1 - [Cached Version]
  Published on: 3/20/2006    Last Visited: 5/9/2007  

  In his opening statement to the meeting, Professor Baulcombe focused particularly on what he regarded as the environmental benefits of GM.He spoke of "enormous environmental benefits, benefits of biodiversity" where GM crops were being grown in North America.In support of these claims he referred to a report by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) which was "to be released shortly."
  
  According to Professor Baulcombe, this report showed that "as a result of growing genetically modified corn and cotton, insect-resistant plants, it's been no longer necessary to apply broad [spectrum] insecticide on a large basis and as a result there has been an increase in the diversity of insect life; there has been a corresponding increase in the diversity of small mammal life and a corresponding increase in the diversity of birds of prey in those areas of the United States."3
  
  This account of the EPA report obviously provides critical support for Baulcombe's next statement: "This is an environmental[ly] benign technology, it can bring us enormous potential benefits."3 However, changes in biodiversity are notoriously difficult to pin down in causal terms so it is, to say the least, unfortunate that Prof Baulcombe drew his support from an unpublished source.
  
  There is also the intriguing question of exactly how Prof Baulcombe managed to gain pre-publication access to the results of the report of a U.S. regulatory authority.Explanation is particularly required because the study he describes is hard to tally with the strict remit of the EPA which is to monitor for environmental harm rather than to seek evidence of benefits.
  
  Commenting, in a personal capacity, on the agency's task of ensuring a "reasonable certainty of no harm," an EPA scientist writes, "We would not typically look at "positive effects".That would be gravy.We have our hands full trying to make sure that negative effects are non-existent or limited!"4 The same scientist also said that while he could not conclusively rule out the existence of the study as described by Professor Baulcombe, being just one scientist in a large agency, he had no knowledge of it.
  
  Professor Baulcombe has been directly asked to provide further details on the study in question.To date none have been forthcoming.The EPA report was the only research evidence Professor Baulcombe cited in his statement about the "enormous environmental benefits" being delivered by the use of GM in agriculture.
  
  Smears of men: discrediting critical research
  
  After Professor Baulcombe's opening statement, almost the very first question that came up was about the American Monarch butterfly research.Prof Baulcombe proved more than ready to meet this particular "false report" with a strong critical response.He told the meeting: "Actually, that research was discredited by a letter published by the former chairman of the Advisory Committee on Releases to the Environment the following week."3
  
  Later the Monarch question was brought up again and this time Prof Baulcombe spelt out exactly why the research did not deserve to be treated seriously: "It's rather unfortunate that we get back to this report of the butterfly.The most significant finding from that report was not that the genetically modified maize damaged the butterfly, it was actually that non-genetically modified maize pollen had damaged the butterfly and that was the most staggering finding in that paper if you look at the information that's in there.There were no real differences between the damage caused to the Monarch butterflies by the genetically modified maize pollen, [it was] not that different to the damage caused to the butterflies by the non-genetically modified maize pollen."3
  
  In fact, nothing that Prof Baulcombe told the meeting about the Monarch research is remotely true.
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  More startlingly, Dr John Losey, the principal author of the Monarch paper, has dismissed Prof Baulcombe's other claim that the butterfly was damaged equally by non-GM pollen as not only wrong and "completely without merit" but as having come from someone who would appear to have sought to rubbish the research without even bothering to read the published paper.
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  The specific point that caterpillars could be killed as readily by non-transgenic pollen allegedly raised by Dr. Baulcombe is completely without merit.
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  An example of the latter line of attack in relation to Dr Pusztai can be found in the comments of Dr Phil Dale, a close colleague of Prof Baulcombe's at the JIC.
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  Another close colleague of Prof Baulcombe's, Prof Jonathan Jones, told the Sunday Times that Pusztai's results could well be due to naturally occurring toxins in the potatoes, and Baulcombe himself has used this line of attack to dismiss Pusztai's research, telling the New Scientist: "This study is more informative about working with potatoes than it is about GM technology."
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  Another close colleague of Prof Baulcombe's, Prof Jonathan Jones, told the Sunday Times that Pusztai's results could well be due to naturally occurring toxins in the potatoes, and Baulcombe himself has used this line of attack to dismiss Pusztai's research, telling the New Scientist: "This study is more informative about working with potatoes than it is about GM technology."
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  It certainly appears that Baulcombe simply applied to Dr Losey the same tactics that have been employed so persistently against Dr Pusztai.
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  Some, of course, will claim that Professor Baulcombe's tactics in the GM debate are idiosyncratic.
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  But perhaps they should not be surprised that, like Prof Baulcombe's audience, an increasingly discerning public shows a reluctance to accept as "proven scientific fact" statements that sound suspiciously like industry spin or common room gossip.

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  www.plantsci.cam.ac.uk/phdstudentships/baulcombe.html - [Cached Version]
  Published on: 10/12/2008    Last Visited: 6/14/2008  

  David BaulcombeDepartment of Plant Sciences: PhD Studentships
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  Professor David Baulcombe
  
  Find out more about David Baulcombe and his group or email David Baulcombe,plantsci.cam.ac.uk
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  The basic mechanisms of RNA silencing are now well understood (Baulcombe, 2004).
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  Our papers on a RNA processing cofactors (Herr et al., 2006) and Argonaute (Baumberger and Baulcombe, 2005) illustrate the types of approach that can be taken.
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  *Baulcombe, D. (2004) RNA silencing in plants.Nature, 431, 356-363. Baumberger, N. and Baulcombe, D.C. (2005) Arabidopsis ARGONAUTE1 is an RNA Slicer that selectively recruits micro RNAs and short interfering RNAs.Proceedings Of The National Academy Of Sciences Of The United States Of America, 102, 11928-11933. Baurle, I., Smith, L.M.A., Baulcombe, D. and Dean, C. (2007) Widespread role for the flowering time regulators FCA and FPA in siRNA-directed chromatin silencing.Science (in press) Dalmay, T., Hamilton, A.J., Rudd, S., Angell, S. and Baulcombe, D.C. (2000) An RNA-dependent RNA polymerase gene in Arabidopsis is required for posttranscriptional gene silencing mediated by a transgene but not by a virus.Cell, 101, 543-553. Dalmay, T.D., Horsefield, R., Braunstein, T.H. and Baulcombe, D.C. (2001) SDE3 encodes an RNA helicase required for post-transcriptional gene silencing in Arabidopsis.EMBO Journal, 20, 2069-2078. Hernandez-Pinzon, I., Yelina, N.E., Schwach, F., Studholme, D.J., Baulcombe, D. and Dalmay, T. (2007) SDE5, the putative homologue of a human mRNA export factor, is required for transgene silencing and accumulation of trans-acting endogenous siRNA.The Plant Journal, 50, 140-148. *Herr, A.J., Jensen, M.B., Dalmay, T. and Baulcombe, D. (2005) RNA polymerase IV directs silencing of endogenous DNA.Science, 308, 118-120. Herr, A.J., Molnar, A., Jones, A. and Baulcombe, D.C. (2006) Defective RNA processing enhances RNA silencing and accelerates flowering in Arabidopsis.Proceedings Of The National Academy Of Sciences Of The United States Of America, 103, 14994-15001. *Molnar, A., Schwach, F., Studholme, D.J., Thuenemann, E. and Baulcombe, D. (2007) miRNAs control gene expression in single cell alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii.Nature, 447, 1126-1129. Smith, L.M., Pontes, O., Searle, I., Yelina, N.E., Yousafzai, F.K., Herr, A.J., Pikaard, C. and Baulcombe, D. (2007) A novel SNF2 protein associated with nuclear RNA silencing and spread of a silencing signal between cells in Arabidopsis.Plant Cell, 19, doi: 10.1105/tpc.1107.051540
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  *Baulcombe, D. (2004) RNA silencing in plants.Nature, 431, 356-363. Baulcombe, D. (2005) RNA silencing.Trends In Biochemical Sciences, 30, 290-293.
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  RNA silencing is a recently discovered genetic mechanism in many eukaryotes (Baulcombe, 2004; Baulcombe, 2005).It involves double stranded RNA that is processed into short 21-24nt RNA molecules.These short interfering (si) RNAs are then recruited as the specificity determinant of an Argonaute nuclease.Argonaute proteins target RNA molecules with sequence complementarity to the bound siRNA (Baumberger and Baulcombe, 2005).
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  *Baulcombe, D. (2004) RNA silencing in plants.Nature, 431, 356-363. Baulcombe, D. (2005) RNA silencing.Trends In Biochemical Sciences, 30, 290-293. *Herr, A.J., Jensen, M.B., Dalmay, T. and Baulcombe, D. (2005) RNA polymerase IV directs silencing of endogenous DNA.Science, 308, 118-120. *Jones, L., Ratcliff, F. and Baulcombe, D.C. (2001) RNA-directed transcriptional gene silencing in plants can be inherited independently of the RNA trigger and requires Met1 for maintenance.Current Biology, 11, 747-757. Nobuta, K., Venu, R.C., Lu, C., Belo, A., Vemaraju, K., Kulkarni, K., Wang, W., Pillay, M., Green, P.J., Wang, G.-L. and Meyers, B.C. (2007) An expression atlas of rice mRNAs and small RNAs Nature Biotechnology, 25, 473. Smith, L.M., Pontes, O., Searle, I., Yelina, N.E., Yousafzai, F.K., Herr, A.J., Pikaard, C. and Baulcombe, D. (2007) A novel SNF2 protein associated with nuclear RNA silencing and spread of a silencing signal between cells in Arabidopsis.Plant Cell, 19, doi: 10.1105/tpc.1107.051540
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  However after random mutagenesis of Rx we could identify mutants of Rx that were able to confer resistance against the strains that overcame the wild type resistance (Farnham and Baulcombe, 2006).

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  www.keprtv.com/news/health/28350489.html - [Cached Version]
  Published on: 9/11/2008    Last Visited: 9/14/2008  

  The Lasker prize for basic medical research is shared by three scientists: Victor Ambros, 54, of the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester; David Baulcombe, 56, of the University of Cambridge in England, and Gary Ruvkun, 56, of Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston and Harvard Medical School.

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  www.gmwatch.org/profile1.asp?PrId=19&page=B - [Cached Version]
  Published on: 2/23/2008    Last Visited: 2/23/2008  

  David Baulcombe
  
  Prof David Baulcombe is Head of the Sainsbury Laboratory of the John Innes Centre (JIC), Norwich, UK, and of its Plant Molecular Virology Department.
  
  The JIC is often described as Europe's leading plant biotechnology institute.It represents itself as an independent, charitable and mainly publicly funded institution.It has, however, received tens of millions of pounds in funding from major biotech corporations such as Syngenta and DuPont.It has also received millions in donations from the pro-biotech billionaire Lord Sainsbury, after whom the Sainsbury Laboratory is named.
  
  In 1999 Professor Baulcombe told a public meeting on GM crops that US government research 'to be released shortly' had shown that GM crops brought enormous environmental benefits.However, what Baulcombe presented as official US research has been shown subsequently never to have existed.
  
  Prof Baulcombe also claimed with regard to Dr John Losey's Monarch butterfly study (which showed that Monarch butterfly larvae were killed by eating GM pollen), that 'it was actually that non-genetically modified maize pollen had damaged the butterfly'.
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  Prof Baulcombe has been far from alone at the John Innes Centre in promoting GM crops by means that bear little scrutiny.More on this.
  
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