Professor Gene Tyson

Biography

Over the last 15 years, Professor Tyson has established himself as an internationally recognised expert in the development and application of meta-omic and bioinformatic approaches to understand microbial communities in clinical and environmental systems. His research has had substantial reach and significance, including papers demonstrating the development and application of metagenomics (Nature, 2004), metatranscriptomics (PNAS, 2008; Nature 2009), and metaproteomics (Science, 2005) to microbial communities. These approaches bypass traditional cultivation bottlenecks, and have revolutionised how the structure and function of microbial communities is studied. This research has paved the way for numerous important discoveries in microbiology, including work by CI Tyson’s team which has led to identifying important microbial lineages that regulate the Earth’s carbon cycle (Nature, 2015; Science 2018), previously unknown bacterial and archaeal lineages (Nature Microbiology, 2016;  Nature Microbiology, 2017), and characterisation of novel microbial metabolic functions (Nature, 2013; Nature, 2018). Professor Tyson's team has also made important contributions to the development of novel bioinformatic tools for the analysis of meta-omic data (Nature Methods, 2012; Nucleic Acids, 2013, Bioinformatics, 2014; Genome Research, 2015; Nucleic Acids, 2018). These widely used and highly cited bioinformatic tools (>5,000 citations) have undoubtedly helped the widespread adoption of meta-omics in microbiology.