Peter Thorpe

Biography

Peter Thorpe completed his PhD at the University of Edinburgh with Lady Noreen Murray studying the DNA binding specificity of restriction and modification enzymes. He then moved across town to work with David Porteous at the Medical Research Council (MRC)'s Human Genetics Unit, studying genetic therapies for the inherited lung disease Cystic Fibrosis (CF). He received an award from the CF trust to test a new type of therapy to correct mutations that cause CF. This technique relied upon a novel type of gene targeting and he showed using an assay to repair a variant of the gene encoding green fluorescent protein, that the efficiency of the process was too low for clinical use in CF patients.

Research Interest

Interest is to study genetic recombination, in particular by exploiting fluorescent reporters. This led to work exploring how different adult tissues have varying abilities for DNA repair and to the mechanisms underlying asymmetric cell division, which gives rise to these different cells.