Affiliation: Imperial College London, Section of Synthetic and Structural Biology

Luke Yates completed his degree in Pharmacology at the University of Southampton, UK, before earning his PhD from the Division of Structural Biology, University of Oxford, UK. There, Luke worked in the lab of Prof. Robert Gilbert determining the structure of a cytoplasmic Terminal Uridylyl Transferase – an important enzyme in a novel RNA metabolism pathway involved in cell cycle regulation. Continuing an interest in both structural biology and cell cycle regulation, Luke moved to Imperial College London where he joined the laboratory of Prof. Xiaodong Zhang in the Section of Synthetic and Structural Biology. His main research focus in the Zhang lab is the study of the DNA damage response, particularly the checkpoint regulatory kinases Mec1/ATR and Tel1/ATM, using structural biology approaches.