16 Facts About Mark Pallen

Mark J Pallen is a research leader at the Quadram Institute and Professor of Microbial Genomics at the University of East Anglia.

Mark Pallen completed an undergraduate degree in medical sciences at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge and gained his medical qualification from the London Hospital Medical College.

In 2011, Pallen led a crowdsourced analysis of the genome of the outbreak strain from the 2011 German E coli O104:H4 outbreak, which had been genome-sequenced on the Ion Torrent platform by the BGI.

Mark Pallen has shown that whole-genome sequencing can be used to track the spread of resistant bacteria and to study the emergence of antimicrobial resistance.

Mark Pallen has pioneered the use of metagenomics to open up new avenues in ancient DNA research, recovering 200-year-old Mycobacterium tuberculosis genomes from human remains and a medieval Brucella genome sequence.

Mark Pallen then developed a system for automating the creation of taxonomic names for bacteria, which resulted in the publication of over a million new names available for use by the microbiology research community to name new bacterial genera.

Subsequently, in an opinion piece in the journal New Microbes and New Infections and an invited talk for Bergey's International Society for Microbial Systematics, Mark Pallen outlined his ideas for making bacterial nomenclature more accessible.

In 2022, Mark Pallen published over 65,000 names for previously unnamed bacterial and archaeal taxa in the Genome Taxonomy Database, using Python scripts to create user-friendly arbitrary names that comply with the phonotactics and grammar of Latin.

Mark Pallen has been active in viral nomenclature, starting with the creation of over 400 species epithets for the bacterial positive-sense single-stranded viruses in the family Leviviridae.

In March 2021, Mark Pallen suggested in an Opinion article in New Scientist that an alternative should be found to the use of geographical names for variants of SARS-CoV-2, raiding the classical world for options.

In early 2021, Mark Pallen participated in a WHO working group, priming adoption of a scheme for naming variants of SARS-CoV-2 after letters in the Greek alphabet.

Mark Pallen is the author of a popular science book, The Rough Guide to Evolution.

Mark Pallen commissioned and peer-reviewed Baba Brinkman's Rap Guide to Evolution and was responsible for recruiting Alice Roberts to the role of Professor of Public Engagement in Science at the University of Birmingham.

In June 2011, Mark Pallen appeared in an episode of Melvin Bragg's In our Time radio programme.

In 2018, Mark Pallen published a book on the 1978 smallpox outbreak in the United Kingdom, The Last Days of Smallpox: Tragedy in Birmingham, which includes a mixture of popular science and a historical narrative of the outbreak and subsequent court case.

Mark Pallen has served alongside Alice Roberts on the advisory board of the Milner Centre for Evolution at the University of Bath.