Geoff Barton (scientist)

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Geoff Barton
FRSE, FRSB
Barton outside the Discovery Centre, University of Dundee, July 2025
Born
Geoffrey John Barton

(1960-11-01) 1 November 1960 (age 64)
Glenelg, South Australia
CitizenshipUnited Kingdom/Australia
Education
Known forMultiple sequence alignment and protein structure prediction algorithms and their application, esp. Jalview and JPred, Structural bioinformatics, transcriptomics and machine learning in bioinformatics.
SpouseJulia Barton
Children3 sons
Awards
Scientific career
Fields
Institutions
ThesisComputer analysis of protein sequence and structure (1987)
Doctoral advisorMichael Sternberg
Websitewww.compbio.dundee.ac.uk

Geoff John Barton (born 1 November 1960) is a computational biologist who is currently Professor of Bioinformatics at the University of Dundee, Scotland, UK where he is Head of the Division of Computational Biology in the School of Life Sciences.[1][2] He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Scotland's National Academy.[3]

Education

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Barton was educated at Challney High School and Luton Sixth Form College. In 1980 he attended the University of Manchester where he passed the first year of a BSc Honours in Mechanical Engineering before completing a BSc (Hons) in Biochemistry (1984). His final year research project "A Computer programme to aid DNA Sequencing and sequence analysis" tackled the assembly problem for Sanger sequencing on hand read gels. His project supervisor, Barry Robson's work on protein structure prediction inspired him to carry out research for his Ph.D. in this field supervised by Michael Sternberg at Birkbeck, University of London.[4]

Career

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After his Ph.D., Barton was awarded an Imperial Cancer Research Fund (ICRF) Research Fellowship to continue research on protein structure prediction in the Biomedical Computing Unit at the ICRF Laboratories in London. He was then awarded a Royal Society University Research Fellowship in 1989 to establish his group at the University of Oxford where in 1995 he became head of Genome Informatics at the Wellcome Centre for Human Genetics. Barton moved in 1997 to be a Research Team Leader at the European Bioinformatics Institute Cambridge and Head of the Protein Data Bank in Europe before relocating to the University of Dundee in 2001 as Professor of Bioinformatics in the School of Life Sciences.[2] He was initially co-director of the Post-Genomics and Molecular Interactions Centre before becoming Founding Head of the Interdisciplinary Research Division of Computational Biology in 2013.[1]

Research

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Barton's research is focused on the development and application of computational tools for the analysis of protein sequences and their three-dimensional structures in context with evolution to infer structure and function. His work focuses on understanding the link between changes at the level of DNA and their impact on three-dimensional structure, function and disease.[5][6][7] He developed one of the first practical methods for protein multiple sequence alignment,[8] and was an early advocate of benchmarks to assess the accuracy and biological relevance of sequence alignment methods through comparison to alignments generated by three-dimensional structure comparison.[9][10][11] He has also published benchmarks for RNA-seq[12][13][14] and protein ligand binding site prediction.[15]

His group have developed numerous software tools and other techniques that are widely used by the research community including: Alscript (multiple sequence alignment formatting),[16] Jalview (data integration and visualisation workbench on multiple sequence alignments),[17][18][19] JPred (protein secondary structure prediction),[20][21][22] STAMP (alignment of multiple protein three-dimensional structures),[23] and JABAWS (remote execution of software).[24][25]

Barton established the High Performance Computing facility at the University of Dundee in 2001 and has fostered interdisciplinary research through the formation of the Division of Computational Biology that brings together research groups in computer science, computational physics biophysics and bioinformatics.[1]

Other Interests

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Barton has released original instrumental music on several streaming platforms.[26][27] He is also an amateur meteorologist and has maintained the Dundee West End Weather Station since 2002.[28] He was interviewed about the link between bioinformatics and weather forecasting by weather presenter Judith Ralston for the BBC Landward TV show[29] and Stephen Jardine on BBC Radio Scotland.[30]

References

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  1. ^ a b c "Division of Computational Biology, University of Dundee".
  2. ^ a b "School of Life Sciences, University of Dundee".
  3. ^ "Geoff Barton Royal Society of Edinburgh entry".
  4. ^ "Geoff Barton Ph.D. Thesis". p. Computer analysis of protein sequence and structure.
  5. ^ Livingstone; C. D.; Barton; G. J (1993). "Protein sequence alignments: a strategy for the hierarchical analysis of residue conservation". Comput Appl Biosci. 9 (6): 745–56. Retrieved 5 August 2025.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  6. ^ Barton; G. J.; Newman; R. H.; Freemont; P. S.; Crumpton; M. J (1991). "Amino acid sequence analysis of the annexin super-gene family of proteins". Eur J Biochem. 198 (3): 749–60. Retrieved 5 August 2025.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  7. ^ MacGowan; S. A.; Madeira; F.; Britto-Borges; T.; Barton; G. J (2024). "A unified analysis of evolutionary and population constraint in protein domains highlights structural features and pathogenic sites". Commun Biol. 7 (1): 447. Retrieved 5 August 2025.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  8. ^ Barton; G. J.; Sternberg; M. J (1987). "A strategy for the rapid multiple alignment of protein sequences. Confidence levels from tertiary structure comparisons". J Mol Biol. 198 (2): 327–37. Retrieved 5 August 2025.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  9. ^ Barton; G. J.; Sternberg; M. J (1987). "A strategy for the rapid multiple alignment of protein sequences. Confidence levels from tertiary structure comparisons". J Mol Biol. 198 (2): 327–37. Retrieved 5 August 2025.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  10. ^ Barton; G. J.; Sternberg; M. J (1987). "Evaluation and improvements in the automatic alignment of protein sequences". Protein Eng. 1 (2): 89–94. Retrieved 5 August 2025.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  11. ^ Raghava; G. P.; Searle; S. M.; Audley; P. C.; Barber; J. D.; Barton; G. J (2003). "OXBench: a benchmark for evaluation of protein multiple sequence alignment accuracy". BMC Bioinformatics. 4: 47. Retrieved 5 August 2025.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  12. ^ Froussios; K.; Schurch; N. J.; Mackinnon; K.; Gierlinski; M.; Duc; C.; Simpson; G. G.; Barton; G. J (2019). "How well do RNA-Seq differential gene expression tools perform in a complex eukaryote? A case study in A. thaliana". Bioinformatics. Retrieved 5 August 2025.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  13. ^ Schurch; N. J.; Schofield; P.; Gierlinski; M.; Cole; C.; Sherstnev; A.; Singh; V.; Wrobel; N.; Gharbi; K.; Simpson; G. G.; Owen-Hughes; T.; Blaxter; M.; Barton; G. J (2016). "How many biological replicates are needed in an RNA-seq experiment and which differential expression tool should you use?". RNA. Retrieved 5 August 2025.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  14. ^ Gierlinski; M.; Cole; C.; Schofield; P.; Schurch; N. J.; Sherstnev; A.; Singh; V.; Wrobel; N.; Gharbi; K.; Simpson; G.; Owen-Hughes; T.; Blaxter; M.; Barton; G. J (2015). "Statistical models for RNA-seq data derived from a two-condition 48-replicate experiment". Bioinformatics. Retrieved 5 August 2025.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  15. ^ Utges; J. S.; Barton; G. J (2024). "Comparative evaluation of methods for the prediction of protein-ligand binding sites". J Cheminform. 16 (1): 126. Retrieved 5 August 2025.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  16. ^ Barton; G. J. (1993). "ALSCRIPT: a tool to format multiple sequence alignments". Protein Engineering. 6 (1): 37–40.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  17. ^ Waterhouse; A. M.; Procter; J. B.; Martin; D. M.; Clamp; M.; Barton; G. J (2009). "Jalview Version 2--a multiple sequence alignment editor and analysis workbench". Bioinformatics. 25 (9): 1189–91. Retrieved 5 August 2025.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  18. ^ Clamp; M.; Cuff; J.; Searle; S. M.; Barton; G. J (2004). "The Jalview Java alignment editor". Bioinformatics. 20 (3): 426–7. Retrieved 5 August 2025.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  19. ^ "Jalview". The Jalview Website.
  20. ^ Drozdetskiy; A.; Cole; C.; Procter; J.; Barton; G. J (2015). "JPred4: a protein secondary structure prediction server". Nucleic Acids Res. Retrieved 5 August 2025.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  21. ^ Cole; C.; Barber; J. D.; Barton; G. J (2008). "The Jpred 3 secondary structure prediction server". Nucleic Acids Res. 36 (Web Server issue): W197-201. Retrieved 5 August 2025.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  22. ^ "JPred4". JPred website. 5 August 2025. Retrieved 5 August 2025.
  23. ^ Russell; R. B.; Barton; G. J (1992). "Multiple protein sequence alignment from tertiary structure comparison: assignment of global and residue confidence levels". Proteins. 14 (2): 309–23. Retrieved 5 August 2025.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  24. ^ Troshin; P. V.; Procter; J. B.; Sherstnev; A.; Barton; D. L.; Madeira; F.; Barton; G. J (2018). "JABAWS 2.2 Distributed Web Services for Bioinformatics: Protein Disorder, Conservation and RNA Secondary Structure". Bioinformatics. Retrieved 5 August 2025.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  25. ^ Troshin; P. V.; Procter; J. B.; Barton; G. J (2011). "Java bioinformatics analysis web services for multiple sequence alignment--JABAWS:MSA". Bioinformatics. 27 (14): 2001–2. Retrieved 5 August 2025.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  26. ^ "Geoff Barton Music". Spotify.
  27. ^ "Geoff Barton Music". Apple Music.
  28. ^ "West End Weather". Dundee West End Weather.
  29. ^ "Geoff Barton on BBC Landward".
  30. ^ "Geoff Barton on BBC Radio".