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Caroline Dean Professional Title and Affiliation: Royal Society Research Candidate's Name: Caroline Dean Professional Title and Affiliation: Royal Society Research Professor The John Innes Centre Norfolk NR4 7UH, UK and LMB fellow MRC, Laboratory of Molecular Biology Cambridge CB2 0QH, UK 50-Word Abstract: Detailed description of epigenetic control responsible for flowering time variation including epigenetic memory during vernalization. Discovered several mechanisms, including regulatory role of non-coding RNAs on chromatin and stochasticity of decision making at the cellular level, that foreshadowed subsequent discoveries in animals. Curriculum Vitae: Born April 2, 1957, in Cheshire, England. B.A. (First Class Honors, Biology), University of York, UK, 1978; DPhil., University of York, UK, 1982. Research Scientist, Advanced Genetic Sciences, Oakland, CA, 1983-1988; Project Leader, John Innes Centre, Norwich, UK, 1988-2018; Associate Research Director, John Innes Centre, Norwich, UK, 1999- 2009; Royal Society Research Professor, John Innes Centre, Norwich, and MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge University, Cambridge, UK, 2018-. Elected Memberships, Fellowships and Offices: Member, European Molecular Biology Organization, 1999; Fellow of the Royal Society, 2004; German Leopoldina Academy, 2008; Foreign Associate, National Academy of Sciences, 2008; Non-resident Faculty, Salk Institute, 2012-2018; Chinese Academy of Sciences Distinguished Fellowship, 2016; International Honorary Member, American Academy of Arts and Science, 2020; Laboratory of Molecular Biology Fellow, MRC, 2020-2023. Major Awards: Officer of the Order of the British Empire, 2004; BBSRC Anniversary Award for Excellence in Bioscience, 2014; FEBS/EMBO Women in Science Award, 2015; Royal Society Darwin Medal, 2016; Dame Commander of British Empire, 2016; L’Oréal/UNESCO Women in Science European Laureate, 2018; Novartis Prize, Biochemistry Society, 2019; Honorary degree, University of York, 2019; Honorary degree, University of Edinburgh, 2019; Wolf Prize for Agriculture, 2020; Royal Society Royal Medal B, 2020. Statement of Accomplishments: Caroline Dean has answered two central questions in biology: Why do certain plants have to pass through winter before they bloom, and how do they remember that they have been exposed to cold temperatures weeks or months earlier? Along the way, Dean was a pioneer of positional cloning and transposon tagging in plants and contributor to the Arabidopsis genome project. Over the past two decades Dean has exploited the central vernalization regulator FLC as a powerful platform to make a string of amazing discoveries in epigenetics. One arm of her work revolves around natural variation in flowering behaviour, with the crowning achievement being the demonstration that a few small sequence polymorphisms explain a wide range of quantitative behavior of naturally selected variants. The other arm of Dean’s research are mechanistic studies of the highest caliber. Dean could show that many epigenetic pathways converge on FLC, including ones involved in DNA methylation, histone modification, mRNA processing, small RNA production, regulation by non-coding antisense RNAs produced at the FLC locus itself, and liquid-phase separation control of FLC regulators. This work is one of the best examples of plant biology having paved the way for subsequent studies in animal and human biology. Finally, Dean and collaborators developed an explicit mathematical model of how epigenetic modifications that start in a subpopulation of cells and spread out along the FLC locus underlie quantitative epigenetic memory. Dean is, however, not only an amazing scientist. She is also very generous when it comes to advancing the interests of the community at large, both locally in Norwich and the UK, and beyond. Dean was, for example heavily involved in modernizing the John Innes Centre, while outside Norwich she has been tirelessly educating politicians about the tremendous potential of plant biotechnology. Key Publications: 1995 Schmidt, R., West, J., Love, K., Lenehan, Z., Lister, C., Thompson, H., Bouchez, D., Dean C. Physical map and organization of Arabidopsis thaliana chromosome 4. Science 270, 480-483. 1997 Macknight, R., Bancroft, I., Page, T., Lister, C., Schmidt, R., Love, K., Westphal, L., Murphy, G., Sherson, S., Cobbett, C., Dean, C. FCA, a gene controlling flowering time in Arabidopsis, encodes a protein containing RNA-binding domains. Cell 89, 737-745. 2000 Johanson, U., West, J., Lister, C., Michaels, S., Amasino, R., Dean, C. Molecular analysis of FRIGIDA, a major determinant of natural variation in Arabidopsis flowering time. Science 290, 344-347. 2004 Bastow R, Mylne J. S., Lister C., Lippman Z., Martienssen R.A., Dean C. Vernalization requires epigenetic silencing of FLC by histone methylation. Nature 427, 164- 2009 Swiezewski, S., Liu, F., Magusin, A., Dean, C. Cold-induced silencing mediated by long antisense RNA from a Polycomb target. Nature. 462: 799-802. 2010 Liu F, Marquardt, S., Lister C., Swiezewski, S., Dean, C. Targeted 3’ processing of antisense transcripts triggers Arabidopsis FLC chromatin silencing Science 327, 94-97. 2011 Angel, A. Song, J., Dean, C., Howard, M. (2011) A Polycomb-based switch underlying quantitative epigenetic memory. Nature 476, 105-108. 2012 Coustham, V., Li, P., Strange, A., Lister, C., Song, J., Dean, C. Quantitative modulation of Polycomb silencing underlies natural variation in vernalization. Science 337, 584-587. 2014 Marquardt, S., Raitskin, O., Wu, Z., Liu, F., Sun, Q., Dean, C. Functional consequences of splicing of the antisense transcript COOLAIR on FLC transcription Mol. Cell 54, 156-165. 2016 Questa J., Song J., Geraldo N., Dean, C. The sequence specific transcriptional repressor VAL1 triggers Polycomb silencing at FLC. Science 353:,485-488. 2017 Yang, H., Berry, S., Olsson, TSG, Hartley, M., Howard, M. Dean C (2017) Distinct phases of Polycomb silencing to hold epigenetic memory of cold in Arabidopsis. Science 357, 1142-1145 2019 Fang, X., Liang, W., Ishikawa, R., Li, Y., Fiedler, M., Liu, F., Calder, G., Rowan, B., Weigel, D., Li, P., Dean, C. Arabidopsis FLL2 promotes liquid-liquid phase separation of polyadenylation complexes Nature 569, 265-269. .
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