biology

Kim D. Pruitt

Kim D. Pruitt is a biology topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Kim D. Pruitt rather than just read about it. In short: Kim Dixon Pruitt (born 1961) is an American bioinformatician. She is chief of the information engineering branch at the National Center for Biotechnology Information.

Key takeaways

Kim D. Pruitt belongs to biology; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Kim D. Pruitt to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Kim D. Pruitt from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Kim Dixon Pruitt (born 1961) is an American bioinformatician. She is chief of the information engineering branch at the National Center for Biotechnology Information. Pruitt led the development of the RefSeq gene database.

Education Pruitt began her doctoral research in 1983. Her mentor was Maureen Hanson. Pruitt completed a Ph.D. in genetics from Cornell University. Her 1990 dissertation was titled Structure and expression of the Petunia mitochondrial S-PCF locus and cytochrome oxidase subunit II genes. After seeing a Science interview of James M. Ostell at the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) about bioinformatics, Pruitt began working as a postdoctoral fellow at the United States National Library of Medicine (NLM). While completing her research, Pruitt approached Ostell and asked if she could work for him part-time while she was there. As a result, the following year and half from spring 1997 until mid-1998 Pruitt basically had two postdoctoral fellowships.

Career Pruitt joined the NLM in 1998. Ostell hired Pruitt to develop a new project to keep track of curated sequences for the human genome. This program developed into a database of genes known as RefSeq and was released to the public in the Spring of 1999. By 2016, Pruitt managed a team of 22 scientists and worked closely with computer programmers and other teams who supported specific portions of the RefSeq data set. Pruitt's group curated data and created sequence records for humans, animals, plants, fungi, and bacteria. Her curation team expanded significantly between 2012 and 2016 to now support everything except the viruses. In 2017, she became acting chief of the information engineering branch (IEB) at NCBI, where she established a production services operating board to communicate on the status and future directions of critical services, including PubMed, PubMed Central, PubChem, ClinicalTrials.gov, GenBank, BLAST, Pathogen Detection, ClinVar, and dbGaP. This effort led to notable changes to guide and inform product decisions and development priorities. In 2019, Pruitt became chief of the IEB. As chief, Pruitt is responsible for NCBI's collection, creation, analysis, organization, curation, and dissemination of data and analysis tools in the areas of molecular biology and genetics, as well as for the collection and management of bibliographic information. Pruitt leads NCBI's more than 500 highly skilled scientific and technical staff in the design, development, and maintenance of databases, information systems, and software tools, as well as operational management of data submissions, quality checks, and data access. Pruitt's appointment was lauded by NLM director Patricia Flatley Brennan and NCBI director James M. Ostell.

Personal life Pruitt is married and has two daughters.

References

External links Kim D. Pruitt publications indexed by Google Scholar

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Kim D. Pruitt

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Kim D. Pruitt claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In biology, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Kim D. Pruitt before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Kim D. Pruitt ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Kim D. Pruitt

In research: Kim D. Pruitt appears in biology research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Kim D. Pruitt in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Kim D. Pruitt is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1961 births, 21st-century American biologists, 21st-century American women biologists, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Kim D. Pruitt outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Kim D. Pruitt in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Kim D. Pruitt means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Kim D. Pruitt out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Kim D. Pruitt in simple terms?

Kim Dixon Pruitt (born 1961) is an American bioinformatician. She is chief of the information engineering branch at the National Center for Biotechnology Information.

Why does Kim D. Pruitt matter?

Because it connects several biology ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Kim D. Pruitt?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Kim D. Pruitt.