Biography:Melissa A. Wilson

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Short description: American computational evolutionary biologist
Melissa A. Wilson
Born
Stillwater, Oklahoma
NationalityAmerican
CitizenshipUnited States
Alma materCreighton University (BS: Medical Mathematics), Pennsylvania State University (PhD: Integrative Biology)
Known forScience Communication, research on sex chromosomes
Spouse(s)Scott Sayres (m. 2010, divorced 2019)
Scientific career
Thesis (2011)
Doctoral advisorKateryna Makova
Websitewww.sexchrlab.org

Melissa A. Wilson is an evolutionary and computational biologist and assistant professor at Arizona State University who studies the evolution of sex chromosomes.[1][2][3]

Personal life and education

Wilson was born in Stillwater, Oklahoma, and lived there until she was five, then moving to Garland, Texas, then Tempe, Arizona, then to Syracuse, Nebraska.[4] She graduated from Syracuse High School in Nebraska[5] and received her B.S. in Medical Mathematics with Honors in May 2005 from Creighton University under Lance Nielsen.[6]

She received her Ph.D. in integrative biology at Pennsylvania State University under her thesis advisor Kateryna Makova in 2011.[3] She then completed a postdoctoral fellowship under Rasmus Nielsen at UC Berkeley in 2014.

She was professionally known as Melissa A. Wilson Sayres from 2010 until her divorce from Scott Sayres, a physical chemist,[4][7] in 2019.[8] Together they have one daughter.[4]

Career

Wilson is an assistant professor of genomics, evolution, and bioinformatics at Arizona State University. There she is PI of the Sex Chromosome Lab, where she studies genome evolution, mutation rate variation, and population history.[2] One finding of her lab is that crossing over between the X and Y chromosomes occurs in some regions of the chromosomes more often than was previously thought.[9] Another discovery is that the Y chromosome is not decreasing in size,[10][11][12] which contradicts previously publicised claims that the Y chromosome might disappear.[13]

She also discovered evidence of a Y chromosome population bottleneck in human history.[14][15] Wilson hypothesised that a possible explanation for this was partially cultural, saying "“Instead of ‘survival of the fittest’ in a biological sense, the accumulation of wealth and power may have increased the reproductive success of a limited number of ‘socially fit’ males and their sons.”[16]

The lab uses the Gila monster as a model organism to understand the evolution of sex chromosomes.[17][18] As part of her research, she started a crowdfunding campaign which successfully raised over $10,000 to sequence the Gila monster's DNA.[19][18] She has referred to the animals as "cool" and "lovable."[18]

Wilson holds one patent for tumor treatments,[20] and is the developer of several software packages, including XYalign, for accurately aligning sex chromosomes,[21] and TumorSim, for simulating tumor heterogeneity.[22]

Science communication

Wilson is active in public outreach.[23][5][4] She is a regular on the ASU "Ask a Scientist" podcast and has been interviewed by the The New York Times ,[24] The Atlantic,[18] Smithsonian Magazine,[25] and the Pacific Standard,[15] among others, as an expert on genetics. She has also publicly spoken out against the use of science to justify white supremacy[26] and transphobia,[27] and against the maltreatment of victims of sexual assault.[28]

Publications and awards

Selected publications

Selected awards[6]

  • 2019 Awardee, Mary Lyon Award, International Mammalian Genome Society
  • 2018 Awardee, SMBE Allan Wilson Junior Award for Independent Research
  • 2018 Awardee Zebulon Pearce Distinguished Teaching Award, Arizona State University
  • 2010 First Place Award, Genome Research poster competition at CSH: The Biology of Genomes
  • 2008 Women In Science and Engineering Outstanding Service Award
  • 2006 The Pennsylvania State University NSF GRFP Incentive Award
  • 2005 Creighton University Outstanding Mathematician Award[6]

References

  1. ↑ "ASU researchers study the impact of sex chromosomes". https://www.statepress.com/article/2017/11/spscience-asu-researchers-study-the-impact-of-variations-in-human-sex-chromosomes. 
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 "Sex Chromosome Lab" (in en-US). http://www.sexchrlab.org/. 
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 "Melissa Wilson" (in en). 2019-06-12. https://iho.asu.edu/profile/melissa-wilson. 
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 "Why Y? Evolutionary biologist Dr Melissa Wilson Sayres joins RealScientists" (in en). 2014-04-06. https://realscientists.wordpress.com/2014/04/06/why-y-evolutionary-biologist-dr-melissa-wilson-sayres-joins-realscientists/. 
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 "Profile – Helium Zone" (in en-US). https://heliuma16.imascientist.us/profile/. 
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 CV, https://static1.squarespace.com/static/56a2965eab2810d951ae42d9/t/56a321399cadb63cd2befed3/1453531457322/WilsonSayres_CV_long.pdf 
  7. ↑ Melissa A. Wilson Sayres (2010-12-16). "mathbionerd: My last name is two words, take two". http://mathbionerd.blogspot.com/2010/12/my-last-name-is-two-words-take-two.html. 
  8. ↑ Melissa A. Wilson (2019-03-02). "mathbionerd: Changing your name after divorce in academia". http://mathbionerd.blogspot.com/2019/03/changing-your-name-after-divorce-in.html. 
  9. ↑ "Blurred lines: Human sex chromosome swapping occurs more often than previously thought" (in en). https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/03/160323101639.htm. 
  10. ↑ "Study dispels theories of Y chromosome's demise" (in en-US). 2001-11-30. https://news.berkeley.edu/2014/01/09/study-dispels-theories-of-y-chromosomes-demise/. 
  11. ↑ Ghose, Tia (12 November 2012). "Guys, Your Y Chromosome Is an Evolutionary Marvel". https://www.livescience.com/24718-y-chromosome-not-junk.html. 
  12. ↑ "Y Chromosome Likely To Stop Shrinking, Scientists Say (Phew!)" (in en). 2014-01-10. https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/10/y-chromosome-extinction_n_4570390.html. 
  13. ↑ Bowdler, Neil (2012-02-22). "Male extinction theory challenged" (in en-GB). https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-17127617. 
  14. ↑ Starr, Michelle (31 May 2018). "Something Weird Happened to Men 7,000 Years Ago, And We Finally Know Why" (in en-gb). https://www.sciencealert.com/neolithic-y-chromosome-bottleneck-warring-patrilineal-clans. 
  15. ↑ 15.0 15.1 Diep, Francie (14 June 2017). "8,000 Years Ago, 17 Women Reproduced for Every One Man" (in en). https://psmag.com/environment/17-to-1-reproductive-success. 
  16. ↑ Sarah Kaplan (March 18, 2015). "How Survival of the Fittest Became Survival of the Richest". The Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/03/18/how-survival-of-the-fittest-became-survival-of-the-richest/. 
  17. ↑ "Gila monster may help reveal evolution of sex chromosomes" (in en-AU). 2017-04-28. https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/scienceshow/gila-monster-may-help-reveal-evolution-of-sex-chromosomes/8480196. 
  18. ↑ 18.0 18.1 18.2 18.3 Yong, Ed (2016-10-18). "Arizona's Adorable Monster" (in en-US). The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/10/arizonas-adorable-monster/504470/. Retrieved 2019-06-13. 
  19. ↑ "Gila monster genomics: conservation, venom, and treatments for Type-II diabetes" (in en-us). https://experiment.com/projects/gila-monster-genomics-conservation-venom-and-treatments-for-type-ii-diabetes. 
  20. ↑ Olney, Kimberly C.; Nyer, David B.; Sayres, Melissa A. Wilson; Haynes, Karmella A. (2018). "Activation of tumor suppressor genes in breast cancer cells by a synthetic chromatin effector" (in en). bioRxiv 12: 186056. doi:10.1101/186056. PMID 30253781. PMC 6156859. https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/186056v1. 
  21. ↑ Identifying, understanding, and correcting technical biases on the sex chromosomes in next-generation sequencing data: WilsonSayresLab/XYalign, Wilson Sayres Lab ARCHIVED Repositories, 2019-07-12, https://github.com/WilsonSayresLab/XYalign, retrieved 2019-11-13 
  22. ↑ TumorHeterogeneity, Wilson Sayres Lab ARCHIVED Repositories, 2019-04-30, https://github.com/WilsonSayresLab/TumorHeterogeneity, retrieved 2019-11-13 
  23. ↑ "Melissa Wilson". https://sols.asu.edu/melissa-wilson. 
  24. ↑ Angier, Natalie (2018-06-11). "Secrets of the Y Chromosome" (in en-US). The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/11/health/men-y-chromosome.html. 
  25. ↑ Wu, Katherine J.. "The Earliest Mammals Kept Their Cool With Descended Testicles" (in en). Smithsonian. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/earliest-mammals-kept-their-cool-descended-testicles-180969476/. Retrieved 2019-11-13. 
  26. ↑ Harmon, Amy (2018-10-19). "Geneticists Criticize Use of Science by White Nationalists to Justify 'Racial Purity'" (in en-US). The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/19/us/white-supremacists-science-genetics.html. 
  27. ↑ Keenan, Jillian (2014-06-04). "What National Review Doesn't Understand About Sex" (in en). Slate Magazine. https://slate.com/technology/2014/06/national-review-laverne-cox-story-the-science-of-sex-and-transgenderism.html. Retrieved 2019-12-11. 
  28. ↑ Ferreira, Becky (2018-12-05). "We Asked 105 Experts What Scares and Inspires Them Most About the Future" (in en). Vice. https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/zmdqye/we-asked-105-experts-what-scares-and-inspires-them-most-about-the-future. Retrieved 2019-11-13. 



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