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Dame Kay DaviesDBE FRS FMedSci
Davies in 2008
Born	Kay Elizabeth Partridge (1951-04-01) 1 April 1951 (age 73) Stourbridge, Worcestershire, England
Nationality	British
Alma mater	University of Oxford
Known for	Duchenne muscular dystrophy research
Spouse	Stephen G. Davies ​ ​(m. 1973⁠–⁠2000)​
Awards	William Allan Award (2015) Joan Mott Prize Lecture (2010) Croonian Lecture (2018)
Scientific career
Fields	Genetics
Institutions	University of Oxford
Thesis	Structure and function of Chromatin from the slime mould Physarum polycephalum (1976)
Doctoral students	Irene Miguel-Aliaga Sonja Vernes
Website	www.dpag.ox.ac.uk/team/kay-davies

Dame Kay Elizabeth Davies (née Partridge; born 1 April 1951) is a British geneticist. She is Dr Lee's Professor of Anatomy at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Hertford College, Oxford. She is director of the Medical Research Council (MRC) functional genetics unit, a governor of the Wellcome Trust, a director of the Oxford Centre for Gene Function, and a patron and Senior Member of Oxford University Scientific Society. Her research group has an international reputation for work on Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD). In the 1980s, she developed a test which allowed for the screening of foetuses whose mothers have a high risk of carrying DMD.

Early life and education

Davies was born in Stourbridge, Worcestershire (now West Midlands). She was educated at the Gig Mill School, Stourbridge County High School for Girls, Somerville College, Oxford, and Wolfson College, Oxford. She was awarded a Doctor of Philosophy degree in 1976 for research on the structure and function of chromatin from the slime mould Physarum polycephalum.

Career and research

Davies's research group has an international reputation for work on Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD). In the 1980s, she developed a test which allowed for the screening of foetuses whose mothers have a high risk of carrying DMD. DMD occurs when the dystrophin protein fails to express in muscle cells due to a mutation in the gene which codes for the protein. In 1989 Davies discovered that the utrophin protein has similar properties to dystrophin and has since shown in mouse models that up regulation of the former protein in muscle cells can compensate for the absence of latter.

Davies is currently collaborating with European Research Council fellow Dr Peter Oliver investigating neurodegenerative and movement disorders.

Davies is director of the Medical Research Council (MRC) functional genetics unit, a governor of the Wellcome Trust and, with Frances Ashcroft and Peter Donnelly is a director of the Oxford Centre for Gene Function. She was an Executive Editor of the journal Human Molecular Genetics. and stepped down in 2021.

In 2020, together with Richard P. Lifton, she co-chaired a commission report on the contentious subject of Hereditary Human Genome Editing, under the auspices of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine and the UK Royal Society.

She has published more than 400 papers and won numerous awards for her work. She has been a Governor of the Wellcome Trust since 2008 and became Deputy chairman in 2013-18. She was the recipient of the Women in to Science and Engineering (WISE) Lifetime Achievement Award in 2014.

Her former doctoral students include Irene Miguel-Aliaga and Sonja Vernes.

Award and honours

Davies was a founding Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences (FMedSci) in 1998, and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2003. Already a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE), she was advanced to Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in the 2008 New Year Honours. In 2009 she was awarded the Award for Excellence in Molecular Diagnostics by the Association for Molecular Pathology.

She is an Honorary Fellow, Somerville College, University of Oxford. She gave the inaugural Rose Lecture at Kingston University in 2012 and delivered the Harveian Oration at the Royal College of Physicians in 2013. In 2015, she was awarded the William Allan Award by the American Society of Human Genetics. She was appointed a Patron of The SMA Trust in September 2016.

Davies was awarded the Croonian Lecture by the Royal Society in 2018 for "her achievements in developing a prenatal test for Duchenne muscular dystrophy and for her work characterising the binding partners of the protein dystrophin".

Personal life

Davies continued to work with her former husband, Stephen G. Davies, on scientific projects, even after their separation in 2000. Their son {2006-2015} studied Biology and gained a doctorate at the University of Edinburgh. She married Christopher Williams in 2019.

References

1. http://www.ashg.org/pdf/2015_Allan.pdf
2. ^ Kay Davies publications indexed by Google Scholar
3. ^ Miguel-Aliaga, Irene (2000). Spinal muscular atrophy : of flies, worms and men. ox.ac.uk (DPhil thesis). University of Oxford. OCLC 59391590. EThOS uk.bl.ethos.343478.
4. ^ Vernes, Sonja (2007). Investigation of the role of FOXP transcription factors in neurodevelopment. ox.ac.uk (DPhil thesis). University of Oxford. OCLC 317354555. EThOS uk.bl.ethos.497468.
5. ^ Anon (1995). "Davies, Dame Kay (Elizabeth)". Who's Who (online Oxford University Press ed.). Oxford: A & C Black. doi:10.1093/ww/9780199540884.013.U13061. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
6. Kay Davies ORCID 0000-0001-8807-8520
7. "Committee". 22 September 2020.
8. Kay Davies publications from Europe PubMed Central
9. Davies, Kay Elizabeth (1976). The Structure and Function of Chromatin from the Slime Mould Physarum polycephalum (DPhil thesis). University of Oxford. OCLC 500417644. EThOS uk.bl.ethos.453134. Archived from the original on 29 July 2020. Retrieved 10 November 2016.
10. Guiraud, Simon; Aartsma-Rus, Annemieke; Vieira, Natassia M.; Davies, Kay E.; Ommen, Gert-Jan B. van; Kunkel, Louis M. (31 August 2015). "The Pathogenesis and Therapy of Muscular Dystrophies". Annual Review of Genomics and Human Genetics. 16 (1): 281–308. doi:10.1146/annurev-genom-090314-025003. PMID 26048046.
11. "Kay E Davies". University of Oxford. Archived from the original on 6 October 2013. Retrieved 4 March 2014.
12. "Professor Dame Kay Davies CBE, FRS, FMedSci". Wellcome Trust.
13. "Human Molecular Genetics Editorial Board". Oxford Journals. Archived from the original on 18 December 2005. Retrieved 14 October 2014.
14. National Academy of Medicine, National Academy of Sciences, and the Royal Society. 2020. Heritable Human Genome Editing. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. https://doi.org/10.17226/25665.
15. Anon (2003). "Dame Kay Davies DBE FMedSci FRS". London: royalsociety.org. Archived from the original on 17 November 2015. One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from the royalsociety.org website where:

    "All text published under the heading 'Biography' on Fellow profile pages is available under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License." --"Royal Society Terms, conditions and policies". Archived from the original on 25 September 2015. Retrieved 9 March 2016.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)

16. "Past Recipients". Association for Molecular Pathology. Retrieved 12 April 2023.
17. "Honorary Fellows". University of Oxford. Archived from the original on 3 May 2010.
18. "Harveian Oration 2013". Royal College of Physicians. Retrieved 7 April 2014.
19. "ASHG Honors Kay E. Davies with William Allan Award | ASHG". www.ashg.org. 29 June 2015. Retrieved 26 July 2019.
20. "Prof. Dame Kay Davies announced as Patron for". The SMA Trust. 27 September 2016. Archived from the original on 1 October 2016. Retrieved 11 November 2016.
21. "Croonian Medal and Lecture | Royal Society". royalsociety.org. Retrieved 30 July 2018.
22. "Desert Island Discs with Kay Davies". Desert Island Discs. 15 February 2009. BBC. Radio 4.

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v t e Wellcome Trust
Centres and institutes	Current Francis Crick Institute Gurdon Institute Sainsbury Wellcome Centre for Neural Circuits and Behaviour Science Learning Centres WTC for Cell-Matrix Research WTC for Gene Regulation and Expression WTC for Human Genetics WTC for Mitochondrial Research WTC for Molecular Parasitology WTC for Neuroimaging WTC for Stem Cell Research Wellcome Sanger Institute Former Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine Wellcome Research Laboratories
Projects and facilities	1000 Genomes Project Big Picture Cambridge Biomedical Campus Cancer Genome Project ChEMBL Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations COSMIC cancer database DECIPHER Diamond Light Source eLife Ensembl Farmcare Genome Reference Consortium Human Genome Project Malawi Liverpool Wellcome Trust MEROPS Pfam Rfam UK Biobank Wellcome Collection Wellcome Genome Campus Wellcome Library WormBase
Board of governors	Eliza Manningham-Buller Michael Ferguson Tobias Bonhoeffer Alan Brown William Burns Bryan Grenfell Naguib Kheraj Fiona Powrie
Executive leadership team	Jeremy Farrar Chris Bird Stephen Caddick Simon Chaplin Alyson Fox Peter Pereira Gray Mark Henderson Chonnettia Jones Tim Livett Nick Moakes Kathy Poole Jim Smith James Thomas Ed Whiting
Former directors	Peter Williams (1965–1991) Bridget Ogilvie (1991–1998) Michael Dexter (1998–2008) Mark Walport (2003–2013)
Other key people	Damon Buffini William Castell Dominic Cadbury Harold Cook Kay Davies Oliver Franks Roger Gibbs Henry Dale Richard Hynes Anne Johnson Roy Porter Peter Rigby David Steel David Stuart John Sulston Henry Wellcome
Awards and fellowships	Capital Awards Collaborative Awards in Science Investigator Awards in Science Institutional Strategic Support Fund Science Strategic Award Sir Henry Dale Fellowship Sir Henry Wellcome Postdoctoral Fellowship Wellcome Book Prize Wellcome Image Awards Wellcome Trust Centre Wellcome Trust Principal Research Fellow Wellcome Trust Senior Research Fellow
Category

Category:ISI highly cited researchers

• 1951 births
• Living people
• Wellcome Trust Principal Research Fellows
• Alumni of Somerville College, Oxford
• Alumni of Wolfson College, Oxford
• British anatomists
• British geneticists
• British women geneticists
• Dames Commander of the Order of the British Empire
• Female fellows of the Royal Society
• Fellows of the Academy of Medical Sciences (United Kingdom)
• Fellows of Hertford College, Oxford
• British academic journal editors
• Wellcome Trust
• British public health doctors
• People from Stourbridge
• Oxford University Press people
• Dr Lee's Professors of Anatomy
• Fellows of the Royal Society
• Fellows of Somerville College, Oxford
• Professors of Genetics (University of Oxford)
• 20th-century British non-fiction writers
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• Women public health doctors