Geoff Barton (scientist)

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

(1960-11-01) 1 November 1960
Glenelg, South Australia
CitizenshipUnited Kingdom/Australia
Education
Known forSequence alignment software, Protein structure prediction, Jalview, JPred
Awards
Scientific career
Fields
Institutions
ThesisComputer analysis of protein sequence and structure (1987)
Doctoral advisorMichael Sternberg
Websitewww.compbio.dundee.ac.uk

Geoffrey ''Goeff'' John Barton (born 1 November 1960) is a computational biologist and 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 known for his research in computational biology, particularly in the analysis of protein sequences and structures, and for the development of widely used bioinformatics software Jalview. He is also a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Scotland's National Academy.

Education

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 doctoral thesis in protein structure prediction was supervised by Michael Sternberg at Birkbeck, University of London.[3]

Career

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.[4] 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.[4] 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[4] before relocating to the University of Dundee in 2001 as Professor of Bioinformatics in the School of Life Sciences. 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

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 the context of evolution to infer structure and function. His work focuses on understanding how DNA changes impact proteins' three-dimensional structure, function, and role in disease.[5][6][7] He developed 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 with alignments based on three-dimensional structures.[8][9][10] He has also published benchmarks for RNA-seq[11][12][13] and protein ligand binding site prediction.[14]

His group has developed widely cited software tools and techniques:[4] Alscript (multiple sequence alignment formatting),[15] Jalview (data integration and visualisation workbench on multiple sequence alignments),[16][17][18] JPred (protein secondary structure prediction),[19][20] STAMP (alignment of multiple protein three-dimensional structures),[21] and JABAWS (remote execution of software).[22]

Barton established the High Performance Computing facility at the University of Dundee in 2001 and the Division of Computational Biology.[1]

Other Interests

Barton has released original instrumental music on several streaming platforms.[23][24] He is also an amateur meteorologist and has maintained the Dundee West End Weather Station since 2002.[25] He was interviewed about the link between bioinformatics and weather forecasting by weather presenter Judith Ralston for the BBC Landward TV show[26] and Stephen Jardine on BBC Radio Scotland.[27]

Awards and honors

References

  1. ^ a b c "Division of Computational Biology, University of Dundee".
  2. ^ "School of Life Sciences, University of Dundee".
  3. ^ "Geoff Barton Ph.D. Thesis". p. Computer analysis of protein sequence and structure.
  4. ^ a b c d "Biological Data: Analysis, Visualisation and Prediction by Geoff Barton – Professor of Bioinformatics, College of Life Sciences, University of Dundee | Computer Science Blog". blogs.cs.st-andrews.ac.uk. Retrieved 2025-08-19.
  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. doi:10.1093/bioinformatics/9.6.745. PMID 8143162.{{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. doi:10.1111/j.1432-1033.1991.tb16076.x. PMID 1646719.{{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. doi:10.1038/s42003-024-06117-5. PMC 11009406. PMID 38605212.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  8. ^ a b 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. doi:10.1016/0022-2836(87)90316-0. PMID 3430611.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  9. ^ Barton; G. J.; Sternberg; M. J (1987). "Evaluation and improvements in the automatic alignment of protein sequences". Protein Eng. 1 (2): 89–94. doi:10.1093/protein/1.2.89. PMID 3507699.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  10. ^ 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. doi:10.1186/1471-2105-4-47. PMC 280650. PMID 14552658.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  11. ^ 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. 35 (18): 3372–3377. doi:10.1093/bioinformatics/btz089. PMC 6748783. PMID 30726870.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  12. ^ 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. 22 (6): 839–851. doi:10.1261/rna.053959.115. PMC 4878611. PMID 27022035.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  13. ^ 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. 31 (22): 3625–3630. doi:10.1093/bioinformatics/btv425. PMC 4754627. PMID 26206307.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  14. ^ Utges; J. S.; Barton; G. J (2024). "Comparative evaluation of methods for the prediction of protein-ligand binding sites". J ChemInform. 16 (1): 126. doi:10.1186/s13321-024-00923-z. PMC 11552181. PMID 39529176.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  15. ^ Barton; G. J. (1993). "ALSCRIPT: a tool to format multiple sequence alignments". Protein Engineering. 6 (1): 37–40. doi:10.1093/protein/6.1.37. PMID 8433969.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  16. ^ UKRI. "GtR – The Jalview Resource for Sequence Analysis and Annotation". gtr.ukri.org. Retrieved 2025-08-20.
  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. doi:10.1093/bioinformatics/btp033. PMC 2672624. PMID 19151095.{{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. doi:10.1093/bioinformatics/btg430. PMID 14960472.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  19. ^ Drozdetskiy; A.; Cole; C.; Procter; J.; Barton; G. J (2015). "JPred4: a protein secondary structure prediction server". Nucleic Acids Res. 43 (W1): W389-94. doi:10.1093/nar/gkv332. PMC 4489285. PMID 25883141.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  20. ^ 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. doi:10.1093/nar/gkn238. PMC 2447793. PMID 18463136.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  21. ^ 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. doi:10.1002/prot.340140216. PMID 1409577.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  22. ^ 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. doi:10.1093/bioinformatics/btr304. PMC 3129525. PMID 21593132.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  23. ^ "Geoff Barton Music". Spotify.
  24. ^ "Geoff Barton Music". Apple Music.
  25. ^ "West End Weather". Dundee West End Weather.
  26. ^ "Geoff Barton on BBC Landward".
  27. ^ "Geoff Barton on BBC Radio".
  28. ^ "Professor Geoffrey Barton". Royal Society of Edinburgh. Retrieved 2025-08-20.
  29. ^ "Fellows of the Royal Society of Biology | University of Dundee, UK". www.dundee.ac.uk. Retrieved 2025-08-20.
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