Dr Simon Moore

Imperial College London

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Simon Moore is postdoctoral researcher working on cell-free systems and natural product biosynthesis within the groups of Professor Paul Freemont and Dr Karen Polizzi at Imperial College London.

Simon did his PhD at the University of Kent with Professor Martin Warren on tetrapyrrole biosynthesis, where using purified enzymes he was able to elucidate the pathways for both the anaerobic biosynthesis of vitamin B12 (adenosylcobalamin) and coenzyme F430, the nickel based methane catalyst that is responsible for one-third of all global methane emissions.

Since moving to Imperial College to learn about cell-free synthetic biology, he currently works with the EPSRC Frontier Engineering team and is investigating how non-model bacterial hosts that are attractable to biotechnology, but are slow or difficult to engineer, can be explored using cell-free transcription-translation to profile gene expression and characterise new genetic tools. Most recently, he has begun to develop a Streptomyces venezuelae cell-free system to synthesise secondary metabolite enzymes as a potential new approach to studying natural product biosynthesis.