THE IRREPRESIBLE SPIRIT OF Dr.

MARGARET DAYHOFF
March 11, 1925 gave modern science a treasure in the form of Dr. Margaret
Belle (Oakley) Dayhoff. This American physical chemist and pioneer in the field of bioinformatics
was most famously known as THE MOTHER OF BIOINFORMATICS. She was the first woman to
hold office in the Biophysical Society first as Secretary and later the President.

Born as an only child she showed great academic interest right at the outset. After
graduating magna cum laude in mathematics in 1945 from the Washington Square College of New
York University she pursued her PhD in quantum chemistry under George Kimball, in the Columbia
University Department of Chemistry. Post her doctorate, she taught physiology and biophysics for 13
years, while becoming affiliated with the National Biomedical Research Foundation, a Fellow of the
American Association for the Advancement of Science, a councilor of the International Society for
the Study of the Origins of Life (1980) and acting on the editorial boards of DNA, Journal of
Molecular Evolution and Computers in Biology and Medicine.

Perhaps her greatest work is the creation of one of the first substitution
matrices, Point accepted mutations or (PAM). The one-letter code used for amino acids was
developed by her, reflecting an attempt to reduce the size of the data files used to describe amino acid
sequences in an era of punch-card computing.
 Dr. Dayhoff's work in the protein field started in 1961, and included the
development of computer aids to protein sequence determination, such as the reconstruction
of sequences from overlapping peptides and the development of recognition and display
programs for use in X-ray crystallography. She pioneered the development of computer
methods for the comparison of protein sequences and for the derivation of evolutionary
histories from alignments of protein sequences. Her collection of protein sequences
eventually led to the formation of the giant protein sequence repository Protein Information
Resource (PIR).All bioinformaticians would have used UniProt to get information about
proteins. Ever wondered who set it up? It was the same Dr. Margaret Oakley Dayhoff, who
later went on to pioneer the development of programmable computer methods for use in
comparing protein sequences and deriving their evolutionary histories from their sequence
alignments. Though this was before the days of massive outputs of sequence information by
automated and other methods, the professor anticipated the potential to be huge.

She was particularly interested in the possibility of deducing the

evolutionary connections of the biological kingdoms, phyla, and other taxa from sequence
evidence. Toward these ends she collected all the known protein sequences and, as a service
to the scientific community, made them available to others in 1965 in a small book, the first
Atlas of Protein Sequence and Structure, which contained sequence information on 65
proteins. The subsequent volumes of this Atlas served as a valuable reference work for
scientists all over the world and laid the foundation for later use of sequence information for
advancements in biology and medicine.

In her own words, Dr.Dayhoff would have described the Atlas.

“We sift over our fingers the first grains of this great outpouring of information and say to
ourselves that the world be helped by it. The Atlas is one small link in the chain from
biochemistry and mathematics to sociology and medicine.”

A scientist par excellence, well respected for her sincerity and

perseverence.Her dedicated diligence helped in the emergence of field-bioinformatics, which
although new has a very bright future. And thus, David Lipman, director of National Center
for Biotechnological Information (NCBI) has rightly called Dayhoff the mother as well as the
father of bioinformatics for who else deserves to be so.