Chris Ponting

Chair of Medical Bioinformatics, University of Edinburgh
Professor Chris Ponting is Chair of Medical Bioinformatics and a Principal Investigator at the MRC Human Genetics Unit, Institute of Genetics and Cancer. Chris started his research in particle physics before moving via biophysics to bioinformatics and genomics. Aside from one year at the National Centre for Biotechnology Information (NIH, Bethesda, MD), he pursued his research at the University of Oxford before moving to Edinburgh in 2016. His research group has made substantial contributions to protein science, evolutionary biology, genetics and genomics. Early in his career he discovered many important protein domain families. He then provided the first evolutionary analyses for mammalian genomes whilst leading protein analysis teams for the human and mouse genome sequencing projects. His research established that 8.2% of the human genome is constrained, and thus is likely functional.

Chris has been on Editorial Boards of Genome Research, Genome Biology, Human Molecular Genetics, Annual Review of Genomics and Human Genetics, and Trends in Genetics, and was a Senior Editor of eLife until 2015. He served as Program Committee member for the CSHL Biology of Genomes, American Society of Human Genetics and Genome Science conferences. He was Head of the UK Node of ELIXIR and Chair of EMBL-EBI’s External Training Advisory Group and founded CGAT (www.cgat.org), an MRC-funded training centre. Professor Ponting is a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences and a Member of the European Molecular Biology Organisation.

He leads the DecodeME study which is a £3.2m NIHR and MRC-funded strategic grant running until August 2025. With 18,000 DNA participants, this is the world’s largest genetic study into ME/CFS. An initial genome-wide association analysis (using matched UK Biobank individuals as controls) will occur late in 2024. DecodeME is a co-production with people with lived experience of ME/CFS that adheres to UK PPI Standards.

PhD students also work in the group on ME/CFS genetics funded by Action for ME or by ME Research UK. We support Action for ME’s vision to establish the UK’s first Genetics Centre of Excellence, a virtual network of ME researchers who, with the ME community, will build on the genetic insights gained through DecodeME and other studies.