Eugene V. Koonin

Dr. Eugene Koonin is a Senior Investigator at the National Center for Biotechnology Information of the National Library of Medicine. Over the course of his career, Koonin has contributed to nearly every area of evolutionary genomics. He developed the concept of Clusters of Orthologous Genes (COGs) that is central to functional and evolutionary analysis of genomes. With his colleagues, he conducted extensive comparative work on nearly every feature of cell biology, thereby elucidating the likely features of key members of the tree of life, including LECA (Last Eukaryotic Common Ancestor). For example, he thoroughly characterized the evolutionary dynamics of introns in eukaryotes, showing that LECA must have been intron-rich, leading to a novel hypothesis on the origin of the nucleus as defense against intron invasion. Using comparative genomic methods, he also predicted the existence and mechanism of action of a system of adaptive immunity in Archaea and Bacteria (known as CRISPR). With colleagues, Koonin also demonstrated the universal shape of the distribution of evolutionary rates of orthologous genes among diverse genomes, showing that this pattern can be explained by fundamental principles of protein folding. The hallmark of his genomic work is a thorough understanding of the cell biological context in which evolution occurs. His research continues to focus on developing our understanding the evolution of life, employing existing and new methods of computational biology to further scientific knowledge. Koonin is the author of the books The Logic of Chance: The Nature and Origin of Biological Evolution and Sequence - Evolution - Function: Computational Approaches in Comparative Genomics. His scientific publications appear in BMC Biology, Cell, Nature, and Science.