Anthony James Cuticchia Jr. (December 28, 1966 – January 6, 2022) was an American scientist with expertise in the fields of genetics, bioinformatics, and genomics. In particular, he was responsible for the collection of the data constituting the human gene map, prior to the final sequencing of the genome. He was also a practicing attorney. He died due to cancer on January 6, 2022.

Early life

He grew up in College Park, Maryland. He received his B.A. in Biological Sciences, with honors, from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County in 1987. In March 1992, he completed his Ph.D. in Genetics at the University of Georgia studying under population scientist Jonathan Arnold. He went on to receive a J.D. magna cum laude, from the North Carolina Central University School of Law in 2009.

Accomplishments

In the late 1980s Cuticchia applied the probabilistic metaheuristic method of simulated annealing as a method for genomic mapping. Through the use of binary fingerprinting of DNA (assigning the presence or absence of a particular sequence a 1/0) it was possible to quickly map the genome of Aspergillus nidulans. This was one of the first genomes physically mapped In addition to his work in the development of mapping tools, in 1988, along with others, he applied the Markov chain model to predict the occurrence of DNA patterns. He was the original Data Manager of the GDB Human Genome Database and served as its director both in Toronto at The Hospital for Sick Children as well as at RTI International. He published several books on the human genome during the genetic mapping phase of the human genome project.

Career

Biotechnology involvement

Cuticchia was a scientific founder of New Chemical Entities, a drug discovery and information company founded in 1997. In 1999 it merged with Thetagen, a provided of pharmacogenomic services. New Chemical Entities was merged with Albany Molecular Research in 2001.

Awards

Cuticchia won numerous awards including:

Books