During evolution of life on Earth three principal phylogenetic Domains have appeared: Bacteria, Archaea and Eucarya. The molecular machineries for the processes of DNA replication and transcription are fundamentally related between archaea and eukaryotes, with the archaeal apparatus being in essence a stripped down version of that in eukaryotes. The conservation and simplicity of the archaeal replication and transcription machineries make them useful model systems for understanding the evolution and mechanisms of the fundamentally related, yet vastly more complex, processes in eukaryotes.

Research Details

• Control of replication initiation - understanding the architecture and function of nucleoprotein assemblies at replication origins
• Mechanism of action of the MCM helicase
• Macro-molecular architecture of the replication fork
• Analysis of the key transitions in the archaeal cell cycle
• Characterisation of the role of archaeal ESCRT complexes in cell division
• Structure/function analyses of archaeal transcription