Catherine Green

Cell biologist

I think that I have always liked finding out how things work, and while I was at university (I went to Cambridge to study natural sciences) it seemed to me that trying to figure out how cells work would be a really interesting and useful way to spend my time. I was lucky to be studying just at the time when scientists were starting to be able to sequence whole genomes and the challenge of understanding and using the information that this gives us, has always been a motivator for me. When I started my research career I was funded by Cancer Research UK to do a PhD in London, using yeast genetics and biochemistry to discover how genome stability can be maintained when DNA is damaged. I have worked on similar questions ever since, but more recently I, and my team, use human cells, and in particular we look at how our cells manage to copy their DNA almost perfectly in order to multiply during growth and development. You can see me describing the work that my team do on our lab podcast: http://www.ndm.ox.ac.uk/catherine-green-dna-replication-and-cancer.