Professor Ron Hay FRS FRSE - Honorary Programme Leader
Background
Ron Hay was born and educated in Dundee and obtained a B.Sc. in Biochemistry at Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh in1975. He obtained his PhD in 1979 from the Medical Research Council Virology Unit in Glasgow under the supervision of Dr John Hay for studies on the replication of herpes simplex virus DNA. A Damon Runyon-Walter Winchell Cancer Fund postdoctoral fellowship award led him to work in the laboratory of Dr Mel DePamphilis at Harvard Medical School, Boston where he determined the location and structure of RNA primers that initiate DNA replication at the Simian Virus 40 origin of replication. Returning to the MRC Virology Unit in 1982, he established an independent laboratory working on the initiation of adenovirus DNA replication. In 1985 he moved to the University of St. Andrews where he held Lecturer and Reader positions before taking up the Chair in Molecular Biology and becoming Deputy Director of the new Centre for Biomolecular Sciences. In 2005 he joined the Wellcome Trust Centre for Gene Regulation and Expression in the College of Life Sciences at the University of Dundee as Professor of Molecular Biology.
Ron’s research has established conjugation with the Small Ubiquitin-like Modifier (SUMO) as an important regulatory mechanism in eukaryotes. He recently uncovered a key role for SUMO and ubiquitin in mediating the therapeutic effects of arsenic for the treatment of Acute Promyelocytic Leukaemia.
University of Dundee