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C-DEBI External Advisory Board
Director of the Josephine Bay Paul Center in Comparative
Molecular Biology and Evolution & Senior Scientist, Marine
Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole, Massachusetts
Dr. Sogin received his B.S. in Chemistry and Microbiology
from the University of Illinois in 1967 and a Ph.D. in Microbiology
and Molecular Biology in 1972 with Carl Woese. He joined Norman
Pace’s group to work on rRNA processing at the National
Jewish Center in Denver, Colorado. In 1976 he joined the faculty
of National Jewish Hospital and attained the rank of Associate
Professor in the Microbiology Department of the University
of Colorado Health Sciences Center. Dr. Sogin was also a Miller
Professor at the University of California at Berkeley. He
moved to the Marine Biological Laboratory in 1989 after establishing
the summer Workshop in Molecular Evolution. His laboratory
founded the Josephine Bay Paul Center for Comparative Molecular
Biology and Evolution in 1996. Over its short history, the
Bay Paul Center has become a focal point for collaborative
research between molecular biologists, biochemists, parasitologists,
ecologists, and other colleagues from the MBL’s summer
and resident communities, and from around the world.
Dr. Sogin has spent much of his career using molecular phylogeny
to determine evolutionary relationships among eukaryotic microbes
and to explore natural microbial eukaryotes in the environment.
His work laid the foundation for understanding the eukaryotic
molecular tree of life at the deepest levels. More recently
his attention has switched to use of massively parallel sequencing
technology to explore the diversity and relative abundance
of different kinds of microorganisms in marine and terrestrial
environments as well as the microbiomes of mammalian organisms.
His research group discovered that microbial diversity in
the oceans is orders of magnitude greater than previously
reported. Low abundance organisms account for most of the
observed phylogenettic diversity. This “rare biosphere”
is very ancient and may represent a nearly inexhaustible source
of genomic innovation.
Dr. Sogin is a fellow of the American Association for the
Advancement of Science, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences,
and the American Academy of Microbiology. He has served on
the National Research Council’s Space Studies Board
and is currently a member of the American Society of Microbiology,
the Society of Protozoologists, the Society for Molecular
Biology and Evolution, and the American Society for Cell Biology.
Dr. Sogin was the recipient of the Stoll Stunkard Award from
the American Society for Microbiology and the Roger Porter
Award from the American Society for Microbiology. He currently
serves on the editorial boards of Environmental Microbiology
and Protist, and has published more than two hundred peer
reviewed manuscripts.
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Mitch
Sogin
