After his PhD, Baulcombe spent the following three years as a postdoctoral fellow in North America, first at McGill University (Montreal, Quebec, Canada) from January 1977 to November 1978, and then at the University of Georgia (Athens, Georgia, United States) until December 1980. Baulcombe returned to the United Kingdom then, where he joined the Plant Breeding Institute (PBI) in Cambridge and started his career as an independent scientist. At the PBI, Baulcombe initially held the position of Higher Scientific Officer, and was promoted to Principal Scientific Officer in April 1986.[14][self-published source?] In August 1988 Baulcombe left Cambridge for Norwich. He joined the Sainsbury Laboratory as a senior research scientist,[15] and also served as head of laboratory between 1990 and 1993 and between 1999 and 2003. In 1998 he was appointed honorary professor at the University of East Anglia, and given a full professorship there in 2002.[14] In March 2007 it was announced that Baulcombe would become the next Professor of Botany at Cambridge University as a Royal Society Research Professor, taking up his post in September 2007.[16] In 2009, the position was renamed "Regius Professor of Botany". In 2020 he was succeeded by Ottoline Leyser.
He serves on several committees and study sections,[17] was elected Member of the European Molecular Biology Organisation in 1997[1] and was president of the International Society of Plant Molecular Biology 2003–2004. As of 2007[update], he is also a senior advisor for The EMBO Journal.[18] He also served on the Life Sciences jury for the Infosys Prize in 2015.
With Andrew Hamilton he discovered the small interfering RNA that is the specificity determinant in RNA-mediated gene silencing.[30] Baulcombe's group demonstrated that while viruses can induce gene silencing, some viruses encode proteins that suppress gene silencing.[17] After these initial observations in plants, many laboratories around the world searched for the occurrence of this phenomenon in other organisms. In 1998 Craig Mello and Andrew Fire reported a potent gene silencing effect after injecting double stranded RNA into Caenorhabditis elegans.[31] This discovery was particularly notable because it represented the first identification of the causative agent for the phenomenon. Fire and Mello were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine[32] in 2006 for their work.
[33]
With other members of his research group at the Sainsbury Laboratory, Baulcombe also helped unravel the importance of small interfering RNA in epigenetics and in defence against viruses.
In June 2009, Baulcombe was awarded a knighthood by Queen Elizabeth II.[34] Baulcombe resides in Norwich. Baulcombe has also received the following honours and awards:
Baulcombe's nomination for the Royal Society reads
David Baulcombe has made an outstanding contribution to the inter-related areas of plant virology, gene silencing and disease resistance. He discovered a specific signalling system and an antiviral defence system in plants. This led to the development of new technologies that promise to revolutionise gene discovery in plant biology.[10]
^ abBaulcombe, David (1976). The Processing and Intracellular Transport of Messenger RNA in a Higher Plant (1976) (PhD thesis). University of Edinburgh. hdl:1842/14914. EThOSuk.bl.ethos.641386.
^ abAnon (2001). "Professor Sir David Baulcombe FMedSci FRS". royalsociety.org. London. Archived from the original on 23 November 2015. One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from the royalsociety.org website where: