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School of Biological and Behavioural Sciences

Dr Peter Thorpe

Peter

Senior Lecturer in Biochemistry

Email: p.thorpe@qmul.ac.uk
Telephone: +44 (0)207 882 6367
Room Number: Room 4.20A, Fogg Building

Research

Research Interests:

We perform research to understand the regulation of cell division. Cell division is the process that creates new cells to replace aged or damaged tissues in our body, however, uncontrolled cell division is the defining characteristic of cancer. We aim to determine how cell division is regulated to allow us to control this process. The ultimate aim is to be able to regulate cell division as a treatment for cancer and to promote cell division of stem cells for regenerative medicine.

A central hypothesis to our work is that the position of proteins within the cell controls cell division. We place normal proteins in different locations within the cell, next to new partner proteins, and test the effect upon cell division. Some of the resulting changes promote cell division, while others block it. We then use this knowledge to both understand how the normal process of cell division is controlled and furthermore to understand how it may be manipulated, for example in cancer therapy. We principally use baker's yeast since the scale of these experiments is not possible in human cells. Nevertheless, the control of cell division is the same in human cells as in yeast and consequently our findings are broadly applicable.

Research department

Publications

Browse a list of publications by Dr Thorpe

Supervision

PhD supervision

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