Late pupal visual system

Martin Webb Biography

Martin Webb is a group leader in the Division of Physical Biochemistry, working on the interface between Biophysics, Biochemistry and Chemistry.

He originally trained as a chemist at Oxford, before working on enzyme mechanisms at Oxford and Harvard, particularly on stereochemical aspects of interactions between substrates and proteins. He moved to the Biochemistry Department at the University of Bristol, working on muscle biophysics and biochemistry. He then held a Muscular Dystrophy Association Fellowship at the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics, University of Pennsylvania. There he worked particularly on oxygen isotope exchange and stereochemical methods to investigate ATPase mechanisms, and on application of such methods to single muscle fibres to investigate mechanochemical coupling. He then returned to the UK to take a position at NIMR.

His research interests lie in developing and applying novel techniques to understand the action of molecular motors, including helicases and myosins. This approach particularly uses fluorescence techniques to understand the relationship between mechanical events (e.g. movement or force) and chemistry (e.g. ATP hydrolysis), mediated by these proteins. He is also developing fluorescent, protein-based biosensors and probes. He is an author on more than 100 publications and several patents have come out of his group’s work. The research at NIMR is mainly funded by the Medical Research Council, U.K. Past funding has included NIH, Wellcome Trust, and the European Union.

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