Rate My Professor Ian Grainge

Associate Professor Ian Grainge holds a BA and MA from the University of Cambridge and a PhD in biochemistry from the University of Oxford, completed between 1994 and 1997. His postdoctoral research included positions at the University of Texas at Austin from 1997 to 2000 studying a natural yeast plasmid, Cancer Research UK from 2000 to 2004 focusing on replication proteins and protein structures via x-ray crystallography, and the University of Oxford from 2005 to 2009 on bacterial processes. In 2010, he relocated to Australia to join the University of Newcastle's School of Science (formerly School of Environmental and Life Sciences) and establish his independent laboratory. He received an ARC Future Fellowship in 2012, a four-year grant to investigate the FtsK protein as a potential antibiotic target.

Grainge's research centers on microbiology and molecular biology, exploring how bacteria transmit genetic information through DNA replication, recovery from stalled replication forks using homologous recombination, chromosome segregation, and precise cell division. Central to his work is the FtsK protein, a DNA translocase functioning as an efficient molecular pump during cytokinesis, coordinating chromosome unlinking and serving as a possible cell division checkpoint. His methodologies include biochemical studies of FtsK loading, translocation, and recombination, alongside in vivo E. coli systems with tetO arrays to visualize replication blocks. Key publications comprise 'FtsK and SpoIIIE, coordinators of chromosome segregation and envelope remodeling in bacteria' (Trends in Microbiology, 2022), 'Mobilization of p*dif* modules in Acinetobacter: A novel mechanism for antibiotic resistance gene shuffling?' (Molecular Microbiology, 2020), 'Replication fork collapse at a protein-DNA roadblock leads to fork reversal, promoted by the RecQ helicase' (Molecular Microbiology, 2019), 'Stability of blocked replication forks in vivo' (Nucleic Acids Research, 2016), and editorial work on 'Chromosome architecture and DNA topology in prokaryotes' (Frontiers in Microbiology, 2024). He has secured 25 grants worth $11,359,787. Grainge teaches BIOL2010 Biochemistry, CHEM3550 Medicinal Chemistry, BIOL3100 Microbiology, and BIOL2230 Biomolecules. He contributes administratively as a member of the Institutional Biosafety Committee and Faculty Research and Research Training Committee, and convenes the Biological Sciences seminar series. His affiliations include the Priority Research Centre for Chemical Biology and Clinical Pharmacology and the Priority Research Centre for Digestive Health and Neurogastroenterology.