Curriculum Vitae - Dr Keith Firman

DESCRIPTION OF RESEARCH

During my academic career at Portsmouth I established a strong research group based around several collaborators world-wide who were interested in investigating various aspects of restriction-modification enzymes. My primary focus was the study of Type I R‑M systems as a means of understanding both protein-protein and protein-DNA interactions. Type I restriction endonucleases are complex multifunctional, multisubunit enzymes capable of DNA methylation, DNA cleavage, ATPase activity, DNA translocation, DNA binding and protein-protein interactions.

This web site (that includes this CV) is maintained by me and has been quoted in a number of internationally recognised papers. It is the foremost site on Type I R-M systems and provides a useful means for promoting research in this area.

For some time I was interested in how protein-protein interactions govern the structure and function of these complex, multimeric enzymes. Recently our work on the study of the assembly of these enzymes and studies of the DNA translocation mechanism allowed us to develop their use as a molecular motor, a nanoactuator and a generic biosensor. The University of Portsmouth and I hold two patents on this concept and I was developing this area of research in the field of Bionanotechnology up to my retirement. This led to EU funding under the 5^th Framework FET-OPEN scheme (€1.974million) for a project (Mol Switch) to develop a magnetic molecular switch to link the biological and Silicon worlds. Initial work with BTG International Limited established a Nanotechnology Network (which has now gone due to loss of funding and my retirement) with members from around the world and further funding was made available through EPSRC; although, we had plans to spin to a company from the concept of this virtual network through which copyright‑protected media streaming would have been made available within the HE sector, sadly funding was impossible to raise. I organised bi-annual Workshops for this Network and hoped that the spin-off company would support further Workshops through funding they generated. The Mol Switch Consortium expanded their collaborations, during the last few years of my career, to include two more partners and successfully submitted a bid for €2million to the NEST Pathfinder, Synthetic Biology call allowing us to launch the BioNano-Switch Project, which is now in its final year.