# Paul S. Freemont

Paul Freemont is professor of structural and synthetic biology in the Department of Infectious Diseases, Imperial College London.

## Career

Freemont received a bachelor's degree in biochemistry from the Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, and a Ph.D. in biochemistry, biophysics and molecular biology at the University of Aberdeen. He was a postdoctoral research associate with Thomas A. Steitz at the Department of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry, Yale University. In 1988 he joined the ICRF (Imperial Cancer Research Fund, Lincoln Inn Fields, now called CRUK upon the merging of CRC (Cancer Research Campaign) and ICRF and now situated at the Francis Crick Institute) as a principal scientist in 1987. In 2001 he was appointed to a Professorship of Structural Biology in the Department of Infectious Disease at Imperial College, London.

## Research

During his PhD research in the laboratory of Dr. Linda Fothergill at the Dept. of Biochemistry, University of Aberdeen he sequenced the proteins for two key metabolic proteins, Human skeletal-muscle fructose-bisphosphate aldolase, and chicken skeletal-muscle enolase. In 1984 Freemont started a postdoctoral research associate position in the laboratory of Prof. Thomas Steitz and worked on the X-ray crystallographic structure of DNA polymerase I (Klenow Fragment) and its DNA complexes in collaboration with Dr. Cathy Joyce, Prof. Thomas Steitz and group members in Prof. Nigel Grindley's group in the part of Dept. of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry based in Yale Medical School, prior its move to the Bass Building on Science Hill. In this DNA polymerase I (Klenow fragment) research effort he was joined by Dr. Jonathan Friedman, Dr. Lorena Beese and Dr. Mark Sanderson. In collaboration with Nigel Grindley, Graham Hatfull and Mark Sanderson he worked on the X-ray crystallographic structure of the site-specific recombination enzyme γδ-resolvase. Upon returning to Britain in 1987 he was appointed to a principal investigator position at the ICRF (Imperial Cancer Research Fund Laboratories, Lincoln Inn Fields). Here he studied a very wide spectrum of different proteins/protein complexes and enzymological problems ranging from DNA repair proteins like AP endonuclease to XRCC1 BRCT in collaboration with Tomas Lindahl's group, PML (promyelocytic leukemia protein) structure function studies and the characterisation of the Ring-finger.
After moving to Imperial College in 2001, Freemont engaged in the research of a wide range of enzymological problems, among many others the structure and function studies of the p97 ATPase and also p47, the DNA repair systems in Neisseria such as the AP endonuclease in collaboration with Geoff Baldwin's group at Imperial College and more recently many papers in synthetic biology.

## Books

* Synthetic Biology - A Primer (Revised Edition) Paperback – 24 Aug. 2015 Edited by Geoff Baldwin, Travis Bayer, Robert Dickinson, Tom Ellis, Paul S Freemont, Richard I Kitney, Karen Polizzi, Guy-Bart Stan.

## Awards

Freemont is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Biology
EMBO Member

## Other activities and appointments

Freemont is head of the section of Structural and Synthetic Biology in the Department of Infectious Disease. Co-director of the National UK Innovation and Knowledge Centre for Synthetic Biology (SynbiCIT) at Imperial College London.