Profile

I enjoy working at the University of Leicester as every year I get to meet new groups of students, and do my best to inspire them to be excited about biological sciences! My work involves a lot of computing, as the most exciting thing about modern biology is how much data we can collect, and the amazing things we can do with it using computers!

The L1 or LINE-1 retrotransposons that we work on are the “master” transposons in the human genome, providing the machinery  to move not only themselves, but also non-autonomous transposons and even human genes. Understanding when and where these molecular parasites move has profound consequences for human genome evolution. Recent studies have shown that while most transposons restrict their activity to the germline (where sperm and eggs are produced), L1 retrotransposons may specifically target the early stages of development. We use genome-wide analyses, both in the lab and in silico to investigate the dynamics and regulation of this unusual behaviour, in cultured human cells and DNA from embryonic and germline sources.
We also work on transposons in primates, which involves analysing DNA samples from the chimps, gorillas and orang-utans at our local zoo, Twycross.  The Zoo is a fantastic resource for research and internationally renowned for its primate collection. Another line of our work is studying a transposon that frequently causes genetic mutations in laboratory mice, so we are particularly interested in how this sequence’s mobility is controlled.

What I do in a typical day varies quite a lot based on whether I am involved in teaching or not… At the moment I am mostly involved with teaching bioinformatics (that’s biology + computers) to undergraduate students. This entails quite a lot of typing (emails, writing up results, some programming), but also working with the students to help them carry out an assessed research project. I also teach an undergraduate bioinformatics module in the winter.

If I am not involved in teaching I am helping plan and supervise my PhD, MSc and undergraduate research students’ lab work, as well as doing a little lab work of my own. I also spent quite a lot of time in meetings – many of these are exciting because they involve talking about science, but others less so (mostly administration).