David Glover

Education Glover was educated at Broadway Technical Grammar School, Barnsley

Career and research As a Damon Runyon Fellow at Stanford University he participated in the Recombinant DNA revolution and discovered sequences that interrupted the ribosomal genes of Drosophila. On establishing his independent laboratory at Imperial College London in 1975, he later showed that these were ancient transposable elements. Together with Peter Rigby, Jean Beggs and David Lane, he co-directed a combined research group exploiting the new techniques of recombinant DNA research. In 1978 he was elected Member of the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO).

While at Imperial, Glover was awarded a 10-year personal fellowship from the UK's Cancer Research Campaign that allowed him open up a new area of research pioneering the use of Drosophila as a model in which to study cell cycle regulation. He began by characterising the duplication cycles of centrosomes in the rapid nuclear division cycles of Drosophila embryos. This led to genetic studies that allowed him to discover and name the Polo and Aurora protein kinases, required for the function of centrosomes at the poles of mitotic spindles.

In 1989, he relinquished his position as Head of the Department of Biochemistry at Imperial to move to the University of Dundee, where with David and Birgitte Lane he established the Cancer Research Campaign Laboratories, Dundee. Here his work demonstrated Polo not only to be required at centrosomes in Drosophila but also for cytokinesis.

In Dundee he continued to use Drosophila as a means to uncover new components of the mitotic apparatus and its regulatory circuits. These studies uncovered spindle pole molecules whose functions were regulated by Polo kinase; a germ line specific Cdc25 phosphatase that regulates meiotic entry; and demonstrated the roles of PP1 and PP2A protein phosphatases as negative mitotic regulators. His contribution to science in Scotland was recognised by his election to Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (FRSE).

In 2019, the Glover Lab moved to the California Institute of Technology in USA.

Glover's group are now studying the consequences of supernumerary centrosomes in a variety of mammalian tissues and their consequences for the balance of cell proliferation and differentiation in the skin and pancreas.

Personal life Glover married Magdalena Żernicka-Goetz in 2000.