A. Francis Stewart

A. Francis Stewart
Born (1956-10-13) October 13, 1956
Bristol, UK
NationalityAustralian
Occupation(s)Biochemist, developmental biologist and genetic engineer
Academic background
EducationBSc
PhD
Alma materUniversity of New South Wales
Academic work
InstitutionsGerman Cancer Research Center
European Molecular Biology Laboratory
Technische Universität Dresden

A. Francis Stewart is an Australian biochemist, developmental biologist, and genetic engineer. He is an emeritus senior professor at Technische Universität Dresden.

Stewart's research focused on epigenetics and genome engineering, mainly in mammalian systems. His work in genetic engineering was acknowledged by the International Society for Transgenic Technologies Prize in 2010. He was elected a member of the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) in 2007 and Academia Europaea in 2020.

Education and career

Stewart earned a BSc degree in Biochemistry in 1981 and a PhD in 1985, both from the University of New South Wales, where he sequenced and investigated cloned DNAs encoding bovine milk proteins in Tony Mackinlay’s laboratory.[1] In 1991, he was appointed group leader in the Gene Expression Program at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg.[2] In 2001, he became group leader at the Biotechnology Center (BIOTEC) and chair of Genomics at Technische Universität Dresden (TU Dresden).[3] From 2014 to 2016, he was the director at BIOTEC.[4] He contributed to the expansion of the Tatzberg research campus to include the DFG Center for Regenerative Therapies Dresden (CRTD) Excellence Initiative in 2005,[5] and the DFG Physics of Life (PoL) Excellence Initiative in 2019.[6]

Stewart co-founded and chaired the biotech company Gene Bridges.[7]

Research

With Colin Logie, Stewart developed ligand-inducible site-specific recombinases (SSR-LBDs).[8] To address the thermal instability of FLP recombinase, he and Frank Buchholz engineered the thermostable variant FLPe.[9]

To support large-scale genome engineering, Stewart and Youming Zhang developed recombineering, a method using λ-Red and/or RecE/RecT-mediated homologous recombination in E. coli, which allows for flexible and precise manipulation of large DNA constructs such as BACs. Building upon this, his lab streamlined the protocol to eliminate unwanted recombination events.[10][11]

Awards and honors

  • 2007 – Member, European Molecular Biology Organization[12]
  • 2010 – International Society for Transgenic Technology Prize, International Society for Transgenic Technologies[13]
  • 2020 – Member, Academia Europaea[14]

Selected articles

  • Logie, Christophe; Stewart, A. Francis (1995). "Ligand-regulated site-specific recombination". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 92 (13): 5940–5944. Bibcode:1995PNAS...92.5940L. doi:10.1073/pnas.92.13.5940. PMC 41617. PMID 7597057.
  • Aasland, Rein; Gibson, Toby J.; Stewart, A. Francis (1995). "The PHD finger: implications for chromatin-mediated transcriptional regulation". Trends in Biochemical Sciences. 20 (2): 56–59. doi:10.1016/S0968-0004(00)88957-4. PMID 7701562.
  • Zhang, Yijun; Buchholz, Frank; Muyrers, Joachim P.; Stewart, A. Francis (1998). "A new logic for DNA engineering using recombination in Escherichia coli". Nature Genetics. 20 (2): 123–128. doi:10.1038/2417. PMID 9771703.
  • Rodríguez, Carolyn I.; Buchholz, Frank; Galloway, Jenna; et al. (2000). "High-efficiency deleter mice show that FLPe is an alternative to Cre-loxP". Nature Genetics. 25 (2): 139–140. doi:10.1038/75973. PMID 10835623.
  • Roguev, Andrei; Schaft, Dirk; Shevchenko, Andrej; et al. (2001). "The S. cerevisiae Set1 complex includes an Ash2-like protein and methylates histone 3 lysine 4". EMBO Journal. 20 (24): 7137–7148. doi:10.1093/emboj/20.24.7137. PMC 125774. PMID 11742990.
  • Erler, Axel; Wegmann, Susanne; Elie-Caille, Celine; et al. (2009). "Conformational adaptability of Redβ during DNA annealing and implications for its structural relationship with Rad52". Journal of Molecular Biology. 391 (3): 586–598. doi:10.1016/j.jmb.2009.06.030. PMID 19527729.
  • Skarnes, William C.; Rosen, Benjamin; West, Anthony P.; et al. (2011). "A conditional knockout resource for the genome-wide study of mouse gene function". Nature. 474 (7351): 337–342. doi:10.1038/nature10163. PMC 3572410. PMID 21677750.
  • Goveas, Neethu; Waskow, Claudia; Arndt, Katharina; et al. (2021). "MLL1 is required for maintenance of intestinal stem cells". PLOS Genetics. 17 (12): e1009250. doi:10.1371/journal.pgen.1009250. PMC 8641872. PMID 34860830.
  • Kharlamova, Maria A.; Kushwah, Mahesh S.; Jachowski, Thomas J.; et al. (2025). "Monomers and short oligomers of human RAD52 promote single-strand annealing". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 122 (14): e2420771122. Bibcode:2025PNAS..12220771K. doi:10.1073/pnas.2420771122. PMC 12002259. PMID 40184180.

References

  1. ^ "A. Francis Stewart - Curriculum Vitae". Academia Europea. Retrieved June 2, 2025.
  2. ^ "Pluripotency project brings former group leaders back together". EMBL. 19 July 2013. Retrieved June 2, 2025.
  3. ^ "Chair of Applied Genomics". TU Dresden. Retrieved June 2, 2025.
  4. ^ "Biotechnology Center–Group Leader". TU Dresden. Retrieved June 2, 2025.
  5. ^ "EXC 168: Center for Regenerative Therapies Dresden (CRTD)". DFG. Retrieved June 2, 2025.
  6. ^ "EXC 2068: Physics of Life - The Dynamic Organization of Living Matter (PoL)". DFG. Retrieved June 2, 2025.
  7. ^ "Gene Bridges–Company". Gene Bridges. Retrieved June 2, 2025.
  8. ^ Feil, Robert; Wagner, Jürgen; Metzger, Daniel; Chambon, Pierre (August 1997). "Regulation of Cre Recombinase Activity by Mutated Estrogen Receptor Ligand-Binding Domains". Biochemical and Biophysical Research Communications. 237 (3): 752–757. Bibcode:1997BBRC..237..752F. doi:10.1006/bbrc.1997.7124. PMID 9299439.
  9. ^ Gaj, Thomas; Sirk, Shannon J.; Barbas, Carlos F. (January 2014). "Expanding the scope of site-specific recombinases for genetic and metabolic engineering". Biotechnology and Bioengineering. 111 (1): 1–15. Bibcode:2014BiotB.111....1G. doi:10.1002/bit.25096. PMC 4097888. PMID 23982993.
  10. ^ Court, Donald L.; Sawitzke, James A.; Thomason, Lynn C. (December 2002). "Genetic Engineering Using Homologous Recombination". Annual Review of Genetics. 36 (1): 361–388. doi:10.1146/annurev.genet.36.061102.093104. PMID 12429697.
  11. ^ Copeland, Neal G.; Jenkins, Nancy A.; Court, Donald L. (October 2001). "Recombineering: a powerful new tool for mouse functional genomics". Nature Reviews Genetics. 2 (10): 769–779. doi:10.1038/35093556. PMID 11584293.
  12. ^ "EMBO welcomes fifty leading scientists as members" (PDF). EMBO. Retrieved June 2, 2025.
  13. ^ "International Society for Transgenic Technology Prize". International Society for Transgenic Technology. Retrieved June 2, 2025.
  14. ^ "Members of the Academy of Europe". Academy of Europe. Retrieved June 2, 2025.
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