Sara Goodacre
British arachnologist
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Sara L. Goodacre is a research geneticist and Professor of Evolutionary Biology and Genetics at the University of Nottingham.[1][2] She is the lead for the Open Air Laboratories,[3][Link to precise page] a citizen science project that engages people with the outdoor environment and Deputy Director of the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Doctoral Training Programme.[4]
University of Nottingham (PhD)
Sara Goodacre | |
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| Born | Sara L. Goodacre |
| Alma mater | University of Cambridge (BA) University of Nottingham (PhD) |
| Known for | SpiderLab |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Evolutionary genetics Population genetics Conservation genetics Arachnology |
| Institutions | University of East Anglia University of Nottingham University of Oxford |
| Thesis | Studies on the evolution of Partula (1999) |
| Website | arachnotts |
Education
Goodacre studied the Natural Sciences Tripos at the University of Cambridge as a student of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, graduating in 1995.[5] Goodacre joined the University of Nottingham for her graduate studies and earned her PhD in 1999 for studies on the evolution of Partula land snails.[6][5]
Career
Goodacre joined the University of Oxford[7] as a research fellow in 1999.[5] She was a research fellow at the University of East Anglia from 2002. She was described by the BBC as Spider Woman.[8] As of 2018[update], Goodacre is based at the University of Nottingham, where she founded the SpiderLab in 2007 and leads the ArachNotts research group.[1][9] As a geneticist, Goodacre studies the evolution, population and conservation of spiders.[2] She monitored the mating behaviour and sex ratio of the linyphiid spider Pityohyphantes phrygianus with Bengt Gunnarsson at the University of Gothenburg.[1][10] She also studied the silk of Mygalomorphae spiders and the genetic diversity of spider silk genes[11][1] and found evidence for antimicrobial activity in the silk of common house spiders.[12] She found that Erigone atra, a pest controlling spider, uses long-distance airborne dispersal.[13] Goodacre contributed to the 2011 book Spider Physiology and Behaviour: Physiology.[14] In 2015 Goodacre reported that spiders could survive "sailing" across oceans.[15]
ArachNotts study the diving bell spider and its silk, which it uses to build a diving bell in which it stores air underwater, and have so far identified some of the silk genes used by this spider.[16][11] They also work on the relationship between spiders and the microbes that they carry with them, including the mating behaviour and sex-ratio of offspring, the ecology and biological control potential of spiders in agriculture and the use of genetic tools in the conservation of the endangered raft spider.[16]
Goodacre worked alongside chemists at the University of Nottingham to create functionalised spider silk that could be used for drug delivery, wound healing and regenerative medicine.[17][18][19][20] This involved attaching fluorescent dyes and antibiotics by click chemistry to silk synthesised by Escherichia coli.[17][21][22] The intention is this synthetic silk can slowly deliver antibiotics or be used as a scaffold to grow new tissues.[23] She has patented the synthesised silk (functionalised spidroin).[24]
Goodacre created the app Spider in da House.[25] She works to make people to be less frightened of spiders, as well as engaging the public in improving the UK's biodiversity.[26][27] In June 2017, Goodacre took the SpiderLab to a series of primary schools, working in partnership with the Zoological Society of London.[28] She appears regularly on the BBC.[29][30][31][32][33] She has contributed to The Conversation, The Guardian[34][35] and serves as an editor of both PeerJ[36] and Heredity.[37]