A. Francis Stewart at the NorIMM meeting, June 2009
The seventh ISTT Prize for outstanding contributions to the field of Transgene Technologies will be awarded to Francis Stewart, Professor of Genomics at the Biotechnology Center-TU Dresden (Germany). Francis Stewart will be awarded the ISTT Prize in Berlin, at the TT2010 meeting, where he will also deliver a talk. The ISTT Prize is generously sponsored by genOway.
The Prize Committee, formed by the ISTT President, present and former ISTT Vice President, the CEO of genOway, and the Chair of the TT2010 Meeting, assisted also by the previous ISTT Prize recipients, selected Francis Stewart for his innovative and pioneering work that allows regulated homologous recombination to take place in bacteria, enabling and establishing BAC recombineering, plus a wide range of invaluable tools for specifically modifying and assessing genetic modifications in plasmids, transgenes and genomes. These tools have become central in the functional postgenomic era and instrumental for the international mouse genome knockout consortia. Francis Stewart exemplifies excellence in our field by combining extraordinary molecular biology skills with exceptional vision.
Francis Stewart received his PhD at the University of New South Wales (Sydney, Australia) in 1986. He then did postdoctoral work in Günther Schütz’s laboratory at DKFZ in Heidelberg (Germany) before becoming Group Leader at the EMBL-Heidelberg from 1991-2001. In 2000, he founded the company Gene Bridges GmbH, as a spin-off of EMBL. In 2001 he assumed his current position as Professor of Genomics at the Biotechnology Center TU Dresden (Germany).
Some of his many contributions to the field of Transgenic Technologies are:
A simple assay to determine the functionality of Cre or FLP recombination targets in genomic manipulation constructs.
Buchholz F, Angrand PO, Stewart AF.
Nucleic Acids Res. 1996 Aug 1;24(15):3118-9.
A new logic for DNA engineering using recombination in Escherichia coli.
Zhang Y, Buchholz F, Muyrers JP, Stewart AF.
Nat Genet. 1998 Oct;20(2):123-8.
Improved properties of FLP recombinase evolved by cycling mutagenesis.
Buchholz F, Angrand PO, Stewart AF.
Nat Biotechnol. 1998 Jul;16(7):657-62.
Rapid modification of bacterial artificial chromosomes by ET-recombination.
Muyrers JP, Zhang Y, Testa G, Stewart AF.
Nucleic Acids Res. 1999 Mar 15;27(6):1555-7.
Simplified generation of targeting constructs using ET recombination.
Angrand PO, Daigle N, van der Hoeven F, Schöler HR, Stewart AF.
Nucleic Acids Res. 1999 Sep 1;27(17):e16.
Creating a transloxation. Engineering interchromosomal translocations in the mouse.
Testa G, Stewart AF.
EMBO Rep. 2000 Aug;1(2):120-1.
Point mutation of bacterial artificial chromosomes by ET recombination.
Muyrers JP, Zhang Y, Benes V, Testa G, Ansorge W, Stewart AF.
EMBO Rep. 2000 Sep;1(3):239-43.
DNA cloning by homologous recombination in Escherichia coli.
Zhang Y, Muyrers JP, Testa G, Stewart AF.
Nat Biotechnol. 2000 Dec;18(12):1314-7.
Techniques: Recombinogenic engineering–new options for cloning and manipulating DNA.
Muyrers JP, Zhang Y, Stewart AF.
Trends Biochem Sci. 2001 May;26(5):325-31.
Efficient FLP recombination in mouse ES cells and oocytes.
Schaft J, Ashery-Padan R, van der Hoeven F, Gruss P, Stewart AF.
Genesis. 2001 Sep;31(1):6-10.
Engineering the mouse genome with bacterial artificial chromosomes to create multipurpose alleles.
Testa G, Zhang Y, Vintersten K, Benes V, Pijnappel WW, Chambers I, Smith AJ, Smith AG, Stewart AF.
Nat Biotechnol. 2003 Apr;21(4):443-7.
ET recombination: DNA engineering using homologous recombination in E. coli.
Muyrers JP, Zhang Y, Benes V, Testa G, Rientjes JM, Stewart AF.
Methods Mol Biol. 2004;256:107-21.
A reliable lacZ expression reporter cassette for multipurpose, knockout-first alleles.
Testa G, Schaft J, van der Hoeven F, Glaser S, Anastassiadis K, Zhang Y, Hermann T, Stremmel W, Stewart AF.
Genesis. 2004 Mar;38(3):151-8.
BAC engineering for the generation of ES cell-targeting constructs and mouse transgenes.
Testa G, Vintersten K, Zhang Y, Benes V, Muyrers JP, Stewart AF.
Methods Mol Biol. 2004;256:123-39.
A recombineering pipeline for functional genomics applied to Caenorhabditis elegans.
Sarov M, Schneider S, Pozniakovski A, Roguev A, Ernst S, Zhang Y, Hyman AA, Stewart AF.
Nat Methods. 2006 Oct;3(10):839-44.
Dre recombinase, like Cre, is a highly efficient site-specific recombinase in E. coli, mammalian cells and mice.
Anastassiadis K, Fu J, Patsch C, Hu S, Weidlich S, Duerschke K, Buchholz F, Edenhofer F, Stewart AF.
Dis Model Mech. 2009 Sep-Oct;2(9-10):508-15.
Previous awarded persons with the ISTT Prize were:
6th.- Brigid Hogan, TT2008, Toronto, Canada, October 2008
5th.- Charles Babinet (1939-2008), TT2007, Brisbane, Australia, February 2007
4th.- Andras Nagy, TT2005, Barcelona, Spain, September 2005
3rd.- Qi Zhou, TT2004, Uppsala, Sweden, March 2004
2nd.- Kenneth J. McCreath, TT2002, Munich, Germany, October 2002
1st.- Teruhiko Wakayama, TT2001, Stockholm, Sweden, June 2001
