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Select by Subject or Manager DNA Sequencing Facility . . . . . Mr John Lester _______________________________ Quantitative Proteomics . . . . . Dr Kathryn Lilley _______________________________ Proteomics Core Services . . . . . Dr Mike Deery _______________________________ Protein & Nucleic Acid Chemistry . . . . . Dr Len Packman _______________________________ Metabolomics . . . . . Dr Jules Griffin _______________________________ Baculovirus Facility . . . . . Dr Darerca Owen _______________________________ Biophysics Facility . . . . . Dr Katherine Stott _______________________________ Crystallographic X-ray Facility . . . . . Dr Dima Chirgadze _______________________________ NMR spectroscopy . . . . . Dr Daniel Nietlispach _______________________________ Fermentation Facility . . . . . Dr Nianshu Zhang _______________________________ Bioinformatics & Computational Biology Services . . . . . Dr Jenny Barna _______________________________ Computer & IT Support . . . . . Dr Erik Timmers _______________________________

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Select past member of Department Dr Stephen Bell Prof. Jonathan Blackburn Dr David Brown Dr Pak-Lee Chau Dr Hal Dixon (deceased) Dr Jessica Downs Prof. David Ellar Dr Paul Kemp Dr Simon Lovell Dr Kenji Mizuguchi Dr Massimo Paoli Prof. Richard Perham Dr Peter Reynolds Dr Philip Rubery Dr Gerry Smith Dr Margaret Sunde Prof. Jamie Vandenberg Dr Kira Weissman

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Coordinating DNA Repair and Chromosomal Replication

Research Grouping: Structural and molecular cell biology

In all organisms, repairing DNA damage is critical to maintaining genomic integrity and therefore viability.  Indeed, the loss of chromosomal stability is coincident with the development of many cancer-related diseases. The process of replication fork restart, following fork stalling or collapse, is central to the maintenance of normal genetic equilibrium.

My group aims to examine mechanisms of DNA repair and replication fork restart by taking advantage of the experimental tractability of model archaeal species from the genus Sulfolobus.  These extraordinary hyperthermophilic microbes thrive at temperatures of around 80°C, and at pH as low as 2. Importantly, components of the archaeal DNA repair and replication machinery display functional homology to their eukaryotic counterparts, indicating that basic eukaryotic-like processes can be observed in these experimentally amenable organisms. By investigating the clear archaeal orthologues of eukaryotic repair proteins, the general themes observed in this laboratory will aid our comprehension of eukaryotic DNA replication-associated repair processes.

Advantages of archaeal models:

Figure 1 Sulfolobus species have a wide global distribution, flourishing in sulphurous, acidic, thermal springs. (Pictured: Valley of Geysers, Kamchatka, Far Eastern Russia. Biogeochemistry and Molecular Biology of Extremophiles Workshop and Field Expedition, Kamchatka, 2005).			Figure 2 Replication intermediates at the three Sulfolobus origins, visualised by two-dimensional gel electrophoresis.

   This work is supported by the Medical Research Council.

Lab members
John Blackwood

References