Prof Chris Barnes

Research summary

Mutational processes: We focus on the mechanistic modelling of genetic and sequence data to try to infer the biological processes that shape genomes. We have developed evolutionary models that can be fit to cancer patient sequencing data to infer important parameters such as mutation rates and selection coefficients. We are currently working on modelling structural variation and chromosome instability to try to understand how these important processes contribute to intra-tumour heterogeneity.

Microbiome engineering: Ultimately, we are interested in developing tools to aid in the quantitative understanding of dynamics within microbial communities. We are developing whole-cell bacterial biosensors that can detect environmental changes due to the intestinal microbiota and inflammation. We have developed an experimental model using C. elegans that allows for the study of host-microbiota interactions. We also design and construct artificial microbial communities so that we can understand the design principles of microbial consortia.

Robust gene regulatory networks: Using model space exploration from Bayesian statistics we have developed and parameterised a number of models of morphogenesis in collaboration with developmental biologists. We have also used the same methods to examine the robustness of simple gene networks in the context of synthetic biology, including the dynamics of multi-functional networks. 

Teaching summary

Lecturer/developer SysMIC course: sysmic.ac.uk

CELL3006, CELL3050, ANAT3903, MRes in Synthetic Biology 

BBSRC LIDo, CoMPLEX

Education

Institute of Education

Other Postgraduate qualification (including professional), ATQ02 - Recognised by the HEA as an Associate Fellow |

Publications

Show more publications