Abstract

After my PhD at the University of Bern (Switzerland) and short stays as Research Associate in Switzerland and Japan, I worked as a Postdoctoral Fellow with John Pringle at the University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill, USA ) and with Paul Nurse at Imperial Cancer Research Fund (London, UK). In 2000, I joined the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute (Hinxton, UK) as a Group Leader. I was appointed as Professor of Molecular Systems Biology at University College London (UCL) in 2009, and as Director of UCL ’s Institute of Healthy Ageing in 2019. We apply diverse genetic, cellular, and systems-level approaches to analyse the regulation, function and evolution of genomes, complex ageing-associated processes, and relationships between genotype, phenotype and environment.

I will talk about some of our recent research on genome regulation and cellular ageing using fission yeast and turquoise killifish as model systems. This includes a study showing that a polymorphism in the sole pyruvate kinase gene in S. pombe can explain the balance between respiration and fermentation, leading to substantial metabolic, regulatory and physiological adjustments. An ongoing project analyses cellular quiescence and embryonic dormancy in yeast and killifish, and the possible importance of unknown proteins in these processes.

Click here to join live – https://us06web.zoom.us/j/85937878916