Dame Kay Davies

DBE FRS FMedSci
Kay Davies in 2008
Born
Kay Elizabeth Partridge

(1951-04-01) 1 April 1951[1]
Stourbridge, Worcestershire, England
NationalityBritish
Alma materUniversity of Oxford (BA, DPhil)
Known forDuchenne muscular dystrophy research
Spouse
​
​
(m. 1973⁠–⁠2000)​
[1]
Awards
Scientific career
FieldsGenetics[3]
InstitutionsUniversity of Oxford
ThesisStructure and function of Chromatin from the slime mould Physarum polycephalum' (1976)
Doctoral students
Websitewww.dpag.ox.ac.uk/team/kay-davies

Dame Kay Elizabeth Davies DBE FRS FMedSci[6] (née Partridge; born 1 April 1951)[1] is a British geneticist. She is Dr Lee's Professor of Anatomy at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Hertford College, Oxford. She is director of the Medical Research Council (MRC) functional genetics unit, a governor of the Wellcome Trust,[7] a director of the Oxford Centre for Gene Function, and a patron and Senior Member of Oxford University Scientific Society.[8] Her research group has an international reputation for work on Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD). In the 1980s, she developed a test which allowed for the screening of foetuses whose mothers have a high risk of carrying DMD.[3][9]

Early life and education

Davies was born in Stourbridge, Worcestershire (now West Midlands). She was educated at the Gig Mill School, Stourbridge County High School for Girls, Somerville College, Oxford, and Wolfson College, Oxford.[1] She was awarded a Doctor of Philosophy degree in 1976 for research on the structure and function of chromatin from the slime mould Physarum polycephalum.[10]

Career and research

Davies's research group has an international reputation for work on Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD). In the 1980s, she developed a test which allowed for the screening of foetuses whose mothers have a high risk of carrying DMD. DMD occurs when the dystrophin protein fails to express in muscle cells due to a mutation in the gene which codes for the protein. In 1989 Davies discovered that the utrophin protein has similar properties to dystrophin and has since shown in mouse models that up regulation of the former protein in muscle cells can compensate for the absence of latter.[11]

Davies is currently collaborating with European Research Council fellow Dr Peter Oliver investigating neurodegenerative and movement disorders.[12]

Davies is director of the Medical Research Council (MRC) functional genetics unit, a governor of the Wellcome Trust[13] and, with Frances Ashcroft and Peter Donnelly is a director of the Oxford Centre for Gene Function. She was an Executive Editor of the journal Human Molecular Genetics.[14] and stepped down in 2021.

In 2020, together with Richard P. Lifton, she co-chaired a commission report on the contentious subject of Hereditary Human Genome Editing, under the auspices of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and the UK Royal Society.[15]

She has published more than 400 papers and won numerous awards for her work. She has been a Governor of the Wellcome Trust since 2008 and became Deputy chairman in 2013-18. She was the recipient of the Women in to Science and Engineering (WISE) Lifetime Achievement Award in 2014.[6]

Her former doctoral students include Irene Miguel-Aliaga[4] and Sonja Vernes.[5]

Award and honours

Davies was a founding Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences (FMedSci) in 1998, and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2003. Already a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE), she was advanced to Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in the 2008 New Year Honours.[1] In 2009 she was awarded the Award for Excellence in Molecular Diagnostics by the Association for Molecular Pathology.[16]

She is an Honorary Fellow, Somerville College, University of Oxford.[17] She gave the inaugural Rose Lecture at Kingston University in 2012 and delivered the Harveian Oration at the Royal College of Physicians in 2013.[18] In 2015, she was awarded the William Allan Award by the American Society of Human Genetics.[19] She was appointed a Patron of The SMA Trust in September 2016.[20]

Davies was awarded the Croonian Lecture by the Royal Society in 2018 for "her achievements in developing a prenatal test for Duchenne muscular dystrophy and for her work characterising the binding partners of the protein dystrophin".[21]

Personal life

Davies continued to work with her former husband, Stephen G. Davies, on scientific projects, even after their separation in 2000.[1] Their son {2006-2015} studied Biology and gained a doctorate at the University of Edinburgh. She married Christopher Williams in 2019.[22]

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Anon (1995). "Davies, Dame Kay (Elizabeth)". Who's Who (online Oxford University Press ed.). Oxford: A & C Black. doi:10.1093/ww/9780199540884.013.U13061. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  2. ↑ http://www.ashg.org/pdf/2015_Allan.pdf
  3. 1 2 Kay Davies publications indexed by Google Scholar
  4. 1 2 Miguel-Aliaga, Irene (2000). Spinal muscular atrophy : of flies, worms and men. ox.ac.uk (DPhil thesis). University of Oxford. OCLC 59391590. EThOS uk.bl.ethos.343478.
  5. 1 2 Vernes, Sonja (2007). Investigation of the role of FOXP transcription factors in neurodevelopment. ox.ac.uk (DPhil thesis). University of Oxford. OCLC 317354555. EThOS uk.bl.ethos.497468.
  6. 1 2 Anon (2003). "Dame Kay Davies DBE FMedSci FRS". London: royalsociety.org. Archived from the original on 17 November 2015. One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from the royalsociety.org website where:
    "All text published under the heading 'Biography' on Fellow profile pages is available under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License." --"Royal Society Terms, conditions and policies". Archived from the original on 25 September 2015. Retrieved 9 March 2016.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
  7. ↑ Kay Davies ORCID 0000-0001-8807-8520
  8. ↑ "Committee". 22 September 2020.
  9. ↑ Kay Davies publications from Europe PubMed Central
  10. ↑ Davies, Kay Elizabeth (1976). The Structure and Function of Chromatin from the Slime Mould Physarum polycephalum (DPhil thesis). University of Oxford. OCLC 500417644. EThOS uk.bl.ethos.453134. Archived from the original on 29 July 2020. Retrieved 10 November 2016.
  11. ↑ Guiraud, Simon; Aartsma-Rus, Annemieke; Vieira, Natassia M.; Davies, Kay E.; Ommen, Gert-Jan B. van; Kunkel, Louis M. (31 August 2015). "The Pathogenesis and Therapy of Muscular Dystrophies". Annual Review of Genomics and Human Genetics. 16 (1): 281–308. doi:10.1146/annurev-genom-090314-025003. PMID 26048046.
  12. ↑ "Kay E Davies". University of Oxford. Archived from the original on 6 October 2013. Retrieved 4 March 2014.
  13. ↑ "Professor Dame Kay Davies CBE, FRS, FMedSci". Wellcome Trust.
  14. ↑ "Human Molecular Genetics Editorial Board". Oxford Journals. Archived from the original on 18 December 2005. Retrieved 14 October 2014.
  15. ↑ National Academy of Medicine, National Academy of Sciences, and the Royal Society. 2020. Heritable Human Genome Editing. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. https://doi.org/10.17226/25665.
  16. ↑ "Past Recipients". Association for Molecular Pathology. Retrieved 12 April 2023.
  17. ↑ "Honorary Fellows". University of Oxford. Archived from the original on 3 May 2010.
  18. ↑ "Harveian Oration 2013". Royal College of Physicians. Retrieved 7 April 2014.
  19. ↑ "ASHG Honors Kay E. Davies with William Allan Award | ASHG". www.ashg.org. 29 June 2015. Retrieved 26 July 2019.
  20. ↑ "Prof. Dame Kay Davies announced as Patron for". The SMA Trust. 27 September 2016. Archived from the original on 1 October 2016. Retrieved 11 November 2016.
  21. ↑ "Croonian Medal and Lecture | Royal Society". royalsociety.org. Retrieved 30 July 2018.
  22. ↑ "Desert Island Discs with Kay Davies". Desert Island Discs. 15 February 2009. BBC. Radio 4.

Category:ISI highly cited researchers

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