The University of Sheffield has a long and distinguished history of achievement in the biological sciences, epitomised by the Nobel Prize-winning research of Sir Hans Krebs, who was professor of Biochemistry at the University from 1945 to 1954.

In the 1990s, in anticipation of the profound impact that the Human Genome Project was about to make, the University formulated a long-term strategy for sustained growth in the area of Molecular Biology and Genetics. Building upon the existing strengths in biochemistry and structural biology, the University undertook a concerted programme of recruitment to establish critical mass across a broad spectrum of sub-disciplines in genetics. These ranged from developmental genetics, which addresses fundamental questions about the translation of genetic information into the complex form of an organism, to the newly emerging field of genomic medicine, which aims to translate the vast new repositories of information generated by the genome projects into novel medical practice.

As a result of this strategy, the University Medical School together with the Departments of Animal and Plant Sciences, Biomedical Science, and Molecular Biology and Biotechnology have emerged as some of the leading centres for Molecular Biology and Genetics within the U.K. Each of the Departments achieved the highest possible 5-star rating in the 2001 Research Assessment exercise whilst the Medical School was rated 5. This enhanced research performance has been accompanied and underpinned by a significant growth in grant funding as well as several multi-million pound infrastructure awards that have resulted in the provision of world-class research facilities throughout each department.

Within the Department of Biomedical Science, the recruitment of a cohort of highly talented investigators from some of the leading research institutions in the UK and Europe—including the Medical Research Council National Institute for Medical Research, the Imperial Cancer Research Fund, and the European Molecular Biology Laboratory—led to the foundation of the Centre for Developmental Genetics. This Centre quickly established an international reputation for its ground-breaking research in the analysis of cell signalling, embryonic induction, and tissue polarity, using the genetically tractable organisms Drosophila and zebrafish as model systems. A particular focus of the Centre has been the analysis of the mechanism of action and biological roles of the hedgehog pathway, one of the major signalling pathways in animal development and now increasingly recognised for its role in tissue homeostasis and human disease.

In the Department of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology, recruitment has been targeted to develop the Krebs Institute, a multidisciplinary research grouping which energetically promotes collaborative research, not only between geneticists, biochemists, microbiologists, and structural biologists but also with chemists and information scientists. Research within the Institute ranges from the exploitation of the powerful molecular genetic tools that can be applied to studying fundamental biological processes in yeast, through research on microbial pathogenesis and anti-infective drug discovery, through studies on protein structure, stability, and folding, including disease states such as CJD to the study of membrane proteins.

In the Medical School, the establishment of a strong bioinformatics group together with strategic collaborations with industrial partners has consolidated existing research strengths in a number of key areas, including the genetic basis of inflammatory and infectious diseases as well as cancers.

Over the next 10 years, we anticipate a growing convergence of research within the basic bioscience departments and the Medical School: the use of genetic model systems for the functional analysis of newly identified disease-associated genes will lead to detailed understanding of the molecular and cellular basis of pathologies, whilst the structural analysis of their protein products will provide the basis for the design of new therapeutic agents.

Professor Philip Ingham
University of Sheffield
Western Bank, Sheffield, UK