Professor Anton Enright
- Professor of RNA Biology and Genomics
- Cellular and Molecular Pathology
- Academic Lead - Genomic Facility
- Staff Fellow, Director of Studies, Deputy Graduate Tutor - Trinity Hall
Connect
Location
- Department of Pathology, Tennis Court Road, Cambridge, CB2 1QP
About
Anton read Natural Sciences at Trinity College Dublin, specialising in Genetics before coming to the University of Cambridge for his Ph.D. studies in 1998, with Prof. Christos Ouzounis, working on protein families and biological network analysis. His postdoctoral work was with Prof. Chris Sander at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York working on small RNA target prediction of regulatory sites in mRNAs. In 2004 he started his own independent laboratory at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute, exploring the functions of small non-coding RNAs in various biological processes and diseases. In 2004 he moved to the EMBL - European Bioinformatics Institute, as a Group Leader where he continued to work on non-coding RNAs, including piwi-associated RNAs, lncRNAs and RNA modifications. His laboratory moved to the Department of Pathology in 2018. Anton is also academic lead for the genomics facility at the department which specialises in large-scale sequencing, microarrays and genotyping projects. Anton oversees the Oxford Nanopore facility that hosts the School of Biological Sciences PromethION device.
Academic Roles
- Academic Lead - Genomics (Cambridge Genomics Services), Dept. of Pathology, Cambridge
- Fellow (Pathology), Director of Studies and Deputy Graduate Tutor - Trinity Hall, Cambridge
- External Examiner: Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland - Advanced Therapeutic Technologies
Research
Overview
One of the big discoveries during the Human Genome Project was the abundance of non-coding material within the human genome. Anton has been exploring this non-coding fraction of the genome since the early 2000s, with a particular focus on microRNAs. Our group utilises both genomics and computational biology to detect, predict and describe the regulatory non-coding RNAs as well as their functions and interactions in living organisms and their implications for disease. The Pathology Department at Cambridge is a fantastic environment to translate this research directly towards human disease in collaboration with our wonderful clinical colleagues.
We are a multi-disciplinary team using wet-lab experimental techniques, computational biology and high-throughput genomics to solve these problems. Anton also oversees the Departmental Genomics Facility and the School of Biological Sciences, Oxford Nanopore Facility.
Computational Biology has become a large part of modern biomedical research and much of our work involves the development of new algorithms and methods for dealing with increasingly high-throughput data.
Our work encompasses a number of areas:
- Non-coding RNA research
- Understanding and detecting RNA modifications
- Algorithms for large-scale genomics and RNA transcriptomics
- Development of novel genomics techniques
- Large-scale shotgun metagenomics from human and environmental samples
To learn more about our research, please look here:
Enright Group Web Pages
Lab Members
We are a multi-disciplinary team of both wet, dry and combined biologists.
Ph.D. Students
- Stephanie Wenlock
- Melanie Maranian
- Matthew Morgan (Pathological Society)
- Hazal Okur (Visiting Student)
- Ryan Hall (Co-supervised with Emma Poole)
- Alessandra Learmount (BBSRC)
Masters Students and Undergraduates
- Lina Aoubala (Part II Student)
Teaching and supervision
- Part II Pathology - Genetics and Genomics of Disease - Option Co-Organiser and Lecturer
- Part 1B - Mathematical and Computational Biology - Course Organiser and Lecturer
Supervisions: 1A Biology of Cells, 1B Biology of Disease, Part 1B Mathematical and Computational Biology. Part II Pathology
Collaborators
-
Dr Paolo D'Avino
- Associate Professor
- Division of Cellular and Molecular Pathology
-
Professor Catherine Merrick
- Professor of Parasitology
- Division of Microbiology and Parasitology
-
Professor Matthew Murray
- Professor
- Division of Cellular and Molecular Pathology
- Honorary Consultant Paediatric Oncologist
-
Professor Nick Coleman
- Professor of Molecular Pathology
- Head of the Division of Cellular and Molecular Pathology
-
Professor Sir Tony Kouzarides
- Sir
- Professor of Cancer Biology
- Division of Virology
