ProfessorPaul Freemont

My early research interests focused on understanding molecular mechanisms of important biological systems using interdisciplinary structural biology approaches. I was lucky to have been at the Imperial Cancer Research Fund in my early career where many new fundamental biological discoveries were made and one of my contributions was the identification, characterisation and naming of the RING finer domain, the fourth most commonest domain found in eukaryotes and key for mediating protein ubiquitylation of proteins.

I had a long standing interest in RING-finger proteins and associated pathways including PML and RING-1 and also the role of p97/VAT, a AAA ATPase machine which is involved in many functional pathways through interacting with a plethora of adaptor proteins including p47. The understanding of how cells maintain protein homeostasis by using protein tagging and degradation, protein complex disassembly and recycling is hugely important in understanding many human disease states including cancer and neurodegenerative diseases.

Over the last several years my research interests have focused on synthetic biology. By applying engineering design approaches to construct new biological systems at the genetic level, the opportunity to both explore complex biological systems and apply these to different applications is compelling. My main interests focus on cell free systems and the ability to carry out transcription and translation assays for both prototyping biological designs but also for discovery - for example natural products and new enzyme and the construction of synthetic cells. Another major interest I have is in biofoundries and their role in automating many of the molecular biology tools used for biological design as well as establishing workflows for the synthetic biology design cycle. I was fortunate to be a co-founder and founding chair of the Global Biofoundry Alliance, an organisation of 36 public-funded facilities worldwide with the opportunity for open source developments, sharing expertise and skills and collaborating on globally relevant problems.

Synthetic biology provides an extraordinary tool kit to both explore and construct novel biological systems which can be applied to solve some of the existential challenges we face which includes climate alteration and repair, food security, clean water and infectious disease to name but a few.