George Brownlee facts for kids

George Gow Brownlee is a British pathologist and an important member of Lincoln College, Oxford. A pathologist is a doctor who studies diseases and how they affect the body.

Early Life and Education

George Brownlee went to Dulwich College for his schooling. Later, he studied Natural Sciences at Emmanuel College, Cambridge. He earned a Master of Arts degree and then a PhD in 1967. For his PhD, he studied nucleotides, which are the building blocks of DNA and RNA. His research was guided by the famous scientist Fred Sanger at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology (LMB).

Career and Important Discoveries

From 1978 to 2008, Professor Brownlee worked at the Sir William Dunn School of Pathology. There, he was a Professor of Chemical Pathology, which means he studied how diseases affect the body at a chemical level.

Helping Patients with Haemophilia B

One of his big achievements was creating a way to make human clotting factor IX. This protein is super important because it helps blood clot. People with a condition called Haemophilia B don't have enough of this protein, which means they can bleed too much. Before Professor Brownlee's work, patients had to rely on blood products that could be risky. His method provided a safer source of this vital protein.

Understanding Haemophilia B Leyden

Working with Merlin Crossley, Professor Brownlee helped figure out why some people have a rare type of Haemophilia B called Haemophilia B Leyden. These patients often have a lot of bleeding problems when they are kids, but fewer problems after they become teenagers. They found two sets of genetic mutations (changes in DNA) that stopped important proteins from attaching to the DNA. This prevented the gene that makes clotting factor IX from working properly.

Improving Flu Vaccines

Professor Brownlee also worked with Peter Palese and others to create a new system for studying the influenza (flu) virus. This new method, called reverse genetics, made it much faster to develop influenza vaccines. This helps protect many people from the flu each year.

Writing About Fred Sanger

In 2014, Professor Brownlee wrote a book about the life and work of his former supervisor, Fred Sanger.

Awards and Recognition

Professor Brownlee has received many awards for his scientific work.

• In 1976, he was given The Colworth Medal by the Biochemical Society.
• In 1987, he was chosen as a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS). This is a very high honor for scientists in the United Kingdom. His election certificate praised his work on understanding the sequences of nucleic acids (like DNA and RNA) and how they affect living things. He helped create new ways to study RNA, which sped up early discoveries. He was also recognized for his work on how antibodies are made and how genes work in different organisms.
• He was also elected an EMBO Member in 1979 and a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences (FMedSci) in 1998.

See also

• Pseudogene (database)