News

International Prize for Biology 2023The Department of Genetics is delighted to announce that Professor Richard Durbin has been awarded the 39th International Prize for Biology by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, which this year focused on the Biology of Genomes.The award recognises Richard’s development of innovative foundational tec…

We are extremely pleased to announce that the Genetics Green Team, led by our Sustainability Champions Amy Bains, Emily Kempin and Liam Browne, have successfully achieved both Bronze and Silver awards from LEAF (Laboratory Efficiency Assessment Framework).  This is a tremendous achievement and we thank the huge effort they put into the submission. …

03 April 2023: Department of Genetics celebrated 'National Fly Day'. To begin the day, Dr Felipe Karam-Teixeira presented a talk on the history of researchers using drosophila as a model organism and how different current department members are linked to those who first began working with them.This was followed by Simon Collier presenting different…

Image: Confocal image showing presynaptic terminals from motor neurons of Drosophila larva. Endoplasmic reticulum (ER) lumen is labelled with GFP::HDEL (green) and plasma membrane is labelled with CD4::tdTom (magenta). Loss of function of Rtnl1 leads to a loss of ER tubules while keeping the regions of the network with higher luminal space (i.e., c…

The Department of Genetics is delighted to report that our Professional Services Team were announced as winners of the 'Working as a Team' award at the Professional Services Recognition ceremony on Monday 12 December. The award recognised an outstanding level of service in the face of the considerable challenges associated with keeping an ageing bu…

The Department of Genetics congratulates Dr Felipe Karam Teixera on being selected as a member of the EMBO Young Investigator Programme 2021. Felipe will join a network of 130 current and 368 former members of the programme. Starting in January 2022, Felipe and 25 other new young investigators will have access to a variety of networking opportuniti…

Buchanan Medal Buchanan medallist 2021The Buchanan Medal 2021 is awarded to Professor Anne Ferguson-Smith FMedSci FRS for her pioneering work in epigenetics, her interdisciplinary work on genomic imprinting, the interplay between the genome and epigenome, and how genetic and environmental influences affect development and human diseases.Professor F…

Many congratulations to Ariella Weinberg-Shukron, a new HFSP Fellow inthe Ferguson-Smith lab, who has just been awarded the Israel NationalPostdoctoral Award for Women in Science, a prize in recognition ofoutstanding scientific achievements to date.  Well done, Ariella!

Welcome!Based on the Downing Site in the city centre, the Department of Genetics is a small and friendly department. With world-class research groups and teaching staff, our Natural Sciences inter-departmental teaching encourages Part II students to explore and develop their learning in new and exciting areas.  Take a look at our Undergraduate Webp…

Last year the closure of schools and restricted access to research labs across the UK put a stop to many of the research placements that would normally take place in the summer. These placements play an important role in providing students with experience of what a career in research is like, before deciding what to do next.To help provide access t…

Anne Ferguson-Smith has accepted the invitation to take on the role of interim Pro-Vice Chancellor for Research for the University of Cambridge.  Whilst taking on this opportunity, Anne will be stepping down as Head of Department in January 2021 for the calendar year.  During this time, Anne will continue to be active in the Department of Genetics,…

For many years Alfonso Martinez-Arias has been at the heart of the Developmental Biology community in Cambridge, first in Zoology and for the past 20 years in Genetics. Throughout his time here he has pushed the boundaries of fundamental biology, driven by the question of how cells make choices. First with the fly then more recently through the pow…

The Prabakaran group has identified, cataloged, and classified protein translations from noncoding genomic regions of multiple organisms. Their work, which is to appear in three separate publications (see below), shows that these ‘novel’ genomic regions cannot be defined by our current understanding or definition of a gene. Hence, they call these n…

Cambridge University Press have announced the winners of the 2020 Technology-Enabled Learning Prize. The prize for Science, Technology, Engineering, Maths & Medicine (STEMM), goes to Dr Matt Castle and his team, for the PSLS Biostatistics Initiative Core Statistics Course. The GSLS Biostatistics course supports life science researchers and graduate…

Work led by Megan O'Driscoll, from the Salje group, was published in Nature on 02 November 2020 highlighting the age-specific mortality and immunity patterns of SARS-CoV-2.Among a range of results, it shows that infection fatality rates are very consistent across ages for those <65y across countries but very different in older individuals, highligh…