Dave was born and raised in Cincinnati, Ohio. He earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Cincinnati in 1973 and a PhD in developmental biology from the Mahowald lab at Indiana University in 1978. Starting with postdoctoral research in the Gorovsky lab at the University of Rochester, Dave dedicated the rest of his career to pioneering research in chromatin biology, in which he made numerous groundbreaking discoveries that profoundly shaped the field. In many ways, Dave was ahead of his time. On the basis of his earlier work with the ciliate Tetrahymena, Dave recognized that histones had roles beyond being the inert spools around which nuclear DNA winds. In 1996, Dave and James Brownell, a graduate student in his lab, published a landmark paper that identified the first histone acetyltransferase as a homolog of the yeast transcriptional co-activator Gcn5 (ref. ¹). This discovery, together with previous genetic studies (especially those from the lab of Michael Grunstein at the University of California, Los Angeles), revolutionized the chromatin field by unambiguously linking specific chemical modifications of histone proteins to transcriptional regulation. These discoveries launched exponential growth in understanding how chromatin regulates the genome. With the Allis lab having a leading role, this research had far-ranging effects on our fundamental understanding of human health and disease.

Dave’s boundless passion for science and discovery was unparalleled. His many insightful predictions on the function and regulation of histone modifications were inspired by patterns of amino acid sequences and modifications of the disordered histone tails, which Dave famously cataloged on his office whiteboard. Dave’s mantra about histone primary sequence became ‘every amino acid matters’. His overarching ‘histone code’ hypothesis predicted that patterns of histone modifications — regulated by their site-specific ‘writers’, ‘readers’ and ‘erasers’ — can affect the structure and function of a nucleosome to regulate gene expression^2,3. To test this hypothesis, Dave also recognized the importance of developing and using histone modification-specific antibodies. Dave’s early partnership with companies to distribute these antibodies enabled countless studies into the mechanism and function of these modifications and helped to speed the advancement of many new antibody-based technologies. Throughout his career, his genuine interest in others’ science attracted many trainees and long-term collaborators. Together, Dave and his extended ‘Allis lab family’ explored a wide variety of model systems, ranging from single-celled yeast and ciliate to fruitflies, frogs, mice and patient-derived cancer cells for investigation. Hence, the term ‘zoo blot’ was coined by Dave to refer to immunoblots of histones from various organisms and cell models. The scientific tools and discoveries made in Dave’s lab have deepened our understanding of basic gene-regulatory mechanisms in normal development and physiology as well as in human diseases, notably cancer, and invigorated potential therapeutic strategies.