By Sarah Anderson, PhD
The Department of Microbiology and Immunology and the greater UBC community honour the life of Dr. Julian Davies, who passed away on February 2, 2025.
Dr. Davies earned a bachelor’s degree in chemistry and a PhD in organic chemistry from the University of Nottingham and completed post-doctoral research on chemical synthesis at Columbia University and the University of Wisconsin. A self-proclaimed rolling stone, he held teaching and research positions at the Manchester College of Science and Technology, Harvard Medical School, the University of Wisconsin, and the Pasteur Institute in Paris, his interest in the biology of natural products shifting his focus to microbiology. In 1992, Dr. Davies came to UBC, where he served as head of the Department of Microbiology and Immunology and director of the Life Sciences Institute.
“We were unbelievably lucky to land one of the leading microbiologists in the world as professor and head of our department,” said Bob Hancock, Professor of Microbiology and Immunology at UBC. “His leadership helped to solidify our position as the leading Canadian microbiology and immunology department during his tenure and one of the best in the world.”
Dr. Davies was renowned for his research on the mechanisms of antibiotic activity and resistance. He helped to discover that resistance to aminoglycoside antibiotics stems from enzymatic modification of the drug and to identify the genes encoding these enzymes. His pivotal work illuminated the origin, evolution, and spread of key antibiotic resistance genes and paved the way for new methods in genetic engineering. For example, scientists could incorporate an antibiotic resistance gene into the genetic material that they wished to introduce into cells. Any cells that did not take up the desired genetic material also would not harbor the resistance gene, leaving them susceptible to the antibiotic. Scientists could therefore add the antibiotic to kill off these cells and select for those that had been successfully modified.
In the later stages of his career, Dr. Davies delved into the wealth of bioactive molecules produced by microbes, pursuing fundamental understanding of their role as signalling agents and evaluating their potential to be leveraged therapeutically. Vocal about the urgent need for new antibiotics to treat resistant infections, he mined a range of natural sources for compounds that could kill the elusive ESKAPE (Enterococcus faecium, Staphylococcus aureus, Klebsiella pneumoniae, Acinetobacter baumannii, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, and Enterobacter species) pathogens. Davies uncovered broad-spectrum antimicrobial activity in a compound isolated from a lichen, a symbiotic colony of fungi, algae, and cyanobacteria, as well as in healing Kisameet clay used by Indigenous people in British Columbia, providing valuable new leads for drug development.
At the heart of Dr. Davies’s research accomplishments was his palpable passion for exploring the diversity and complexity of microbe communities. “Whether unraveling the intricacies of microbial genetics or venturing into the chemical landscapes of natural products, he did so with contagious enthusiasm and a genuine love for discovery,” said César de la Fuente, a professor of machine biology at the University of Pennsylvania and former microbiology and immunology student at UBC. In a constant quest to learn, Dr. Davies was known to approach his colleagues with printed copies of papers he was eager to discuss and to ask insightful questions at every seminar.
Dr. Davies not only gleaned but shared knowledge, promoting science education and communication and fostering a collaborative environment at UBC and beyond. “Julian was an enabler of science by making the people that do science talk to each other, not only in academia but also between academia and industry and the public,” said Yossef Av-Gay, Professor of Microbiology and Immunology at UBC and former postdoctoral researcher in Davies’s lab.
Dr. Davies is remembered for his generosity, whether with his home on West 6th Avenue, where he and his wife Dottie would host lively dinner parties, his condo in Whistler, where a weekend stay was his donation to the department holiday party raffle each year, or his time. “He would chat with faculty, staff, students, and janitors with equal interest and enthusiasm,” said microbiology and immunology graduate program manager and academic advisor Darlene Birkenhead.
Dr. Davies’s numerous accolades include being named a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, a member of the US National Academy of Sciences, and a recipient of the American Society for Microbiology Gold Metal and the Bristol-Myers Squibb Award for Distinguished Achievement in Infectious Diseases Research.
Dr. Davies’s legacy of intellectual curiosity and joie de vivre is captured in his autobiographical article "Gathering No Moss," where he wrote, “The practice of science has provided me with a lifetime of good experiences, lots of fun, and only minor disappointments. …Overall, the excitement of following lines of reasoning or leaps of imagination to a new finding is more than enough compensation.”