Our main research focus is to study the protein-primed DNA replication machinery of viruses and exploit them to develop new technologies for gene editing and synthetic biology applications.

We make new biotechnology tools by using the growing sequence databases unearthed by modern genomics, which contain vast numbers of sequences that remain unexplored and uncharacterised.

We aim to study and understand the fascinating mechanism these viruses use as their mode of replication, and then leverage this biologically encoded protein-DNA covalent bond to create new synthetic biology tools.

Our work comprises three areas:

Discover

Sequence databases reveal a large and growing number of viruses predicted to use protein-primed DNA replication. However, almost all of these sequences remain completely uncharacterised. We are exploring this newfound diversity to understand how different viruses of this class replicate their genomes. Viral replication proteins are highly divergent even between viruses of this class, but the molecular details of this diversity is not understood.

Characterise

We clone and express new viral replication proteins to measure their behaviour in cells for the first time. We purify promising viral replication proteins and study their function by recapitulating protein-primed DNA replication in vitro. We spend time characterising these unique proteins and learning the molecular details and mechanisms that confer their unique properties. We aim to understand the optimal conditions for DNA amplification and the important aspects of the replication system.

Exploit

We leverage our new understanding of these viral replication proteins and exploit these to create transformative new technologies. We deliver amplified DNA as a new approach to gene editing inside living cells, with the goal of creating new technologies for the therapeutic correction of human genetic disease.