Professor Steve Busby FRS

• BA 1972 University of Cambridge, Natural Sciences 
• DPhil 1975 University of Oxford

Steve teaches on undergraduate courses at all levels. His biggest contributions are to a second year course on bacterial genes and genomes, and a third year course on bacterial gene regulation. He is currently the Coordinator for the School’s Taught Masters and MRes Programmes.

Steve Busby’s work concerns the mechanisms by which the expression of different genes is regulated in bacteria. Working with Escherichia coli K-12, the lab has elucidated some of the basic rules of promoter recognition by RNA polymerase and some of the fundamental mechanisms by which transcription activators function. The work with RNA polymerase has focused on the roles of the alpha and sigma subunits, whilst the work on transcription activation has developed from studies of the cyclic AMP receptor protein (known as CRP or CAP), which have established a paradigm for understanding transcription activation in bacteria. Early work with CRP, and with the related activator, FNR, was concerned with simple promoters, such as the E. colilac or gal promoters, where one molecule of activator is sufficient for full induction. Recently, the lab has turned its attention to more complicated promoters that are regulated by many different factors. Because bacterial gene expression is exquisitely sensitive to the environment, the lab has focused on complex cases where one molecule of activator is insufficient for full induction.

Vice Chair then Chair of the Biochemical Society (2011-2016)

Head of University of Birmingham School of Biosciences (2012-2016)

Member of BBSRC Committee E (Fellowships)

During the past 2 years, Steve gave invited lectures at: Solihull 6^th Form College (Biology Dept); University of Manchester Leaders in Science Lecture (Faculty of Life Sciences); University of Warwick (Division of Microbiology & Infection); University of Oxford (Synthetic Circuit Design MSc);Oundle School 6^th Form (Evening Lecture Series); University of Birmingham (Biosciences Evening Lecture series); Concord College, Shrewsbury (Readers and Writers Festival); West Midlands Guild of Graduates Evening Lecture; Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (Harwell); NCBS Molecular Biology (Bangalore); ASE Annual Meeting (Birmingham); University of Salford (Health Forum); University of Marburg (Microbiology); Loyola University Medical School (Chicago); UAM Cuernavaca (Bioinformatics); Denbigh High School (Milton Keynes); NUS Mechanobiology Institute (Singapore)

During the past 24 months, Steve spoke at the following international meetings: Synthetic Biology in Action Course (EMBO Lab Heidelberg); 13^th FASEB meeting on Bacterial Transcription (Vermont, USA); 77^th Harden Conference on 2-component signaling in bacteria (Chesford Grange, Warwickshire); M4 Midland Microbiology Meeting (Nottingham); 7^th Sunny Forum (Sun-Yat Sen University, Guangzhou); Indian Institute of Science-MCB75 Meeting (Bangalore); ASM Annual Meeting Microbe 2016 (Boston, USA); Microbiology Society Annual Meeting Marjory Stephenson Lecture (Edinburgh); BIOTEC2017 Plenary Lecture (Murcia, Spain); 14^th FASEB meeting on Bacterial Transcription (Vermont, USA)