Julian Blow

Julian Blow is Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Research and Innovation. In this role he aims to enhance and extend the excellence of research at UEA and develop the ways that this has real-world impact outside academia.

Julian joined UEA in 2024 from the University of Dundee, where he had been Dean of the School of Life Sciences. Under his leadership Dundee was ranked the top university for biological sciences research in both REF2014 and REF2021, and was recognised for a range of successful enterprise initiatives in the biosciences.

As Professor of Chromosome Maintenance, Julian is also an active researcher. He was awarded his PhD from the University of Cambridge, UK, in 1987 from the lab of Professor Ron Laskey and then worked as a postdoctoral fellow with Professor Paul Nurse at the University of Oxford. In 1991 Julian set up his own research lab at the ICRF Clare Hall Laboratories where he was promoted to Senior Scientist. He moved to Dundee in 1997. In 2012, Julian became Director of the Centre for Gene Regulation and Expression. He was appointed Director of Research for the School of Life Sciences in 2014 and he became Dean of School in 2016. Between March 2020 and September 2021, Julian was Interim Vice-Principal (Academic Planning and Performance) and a member of the Dundee University Executive Group. Julian returned to his role as Dean in December 2021.

Julian is a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and a Member of the European Molecular Biology Organization. He has served on a range of national and international scientific committees and is currently Chair of the Scientific Advisory Committee of the Lister Institute of Preventive Medicine.

My research interests centre around the question of how chromosomal DNA replication is organised to ensure precise genome duplication in each cell division cycle. Failures to accurately replicate the genome can lead to many different pathologies, of which cancer is a major example. Achieving precise genome duplication poses a range of questions which my lab has addressed over the years: how is replication organised so that no DNA replicates more than once in each cell cycle? How are replication origins distributed on chromosomal DNA, and what determines when they initiate? What mechanisms ensure the completion of DNA replication even when replication forks are inhibited or even stall? How is DNA replication connected to the checkpoint machinery?

Current research projects involve questions relating to how replication origins are distributed across the genome to ensure that it can be completely replicated even if some replications forks stall, for example if they encounter DNA damage. One major strategy to mitigate the consequences of fork stalling is to activate additional ‘dormant’ origins in the vicinity of stalled replication forks. We are interested in finding out what determines the location of these dormant origins, including questions of how they are licensed in G1 phase before replication starts, and how their activation is regulated by the CDC7 protein kinase during S phase.

The main experimental system I work on is the Xenopus cell-free replication system, though I also have experience working with other model systems, including yeasts and mammalian tissue culture cells. The Xenopus cell-free system is prepared from eggs of the South African clawed toad Xenopus laevis. These egg extracts are unique in supporting all the major nuclear events of the cell division cycle, including complete genome replication. Experimental results using this system have made a major contribution to our current understanding of the cell division cycle and how genomic stability is maintained.