Professor Wendy Bickmore, at the Institute of Genetics and Cancer (IGC), is part of an international team which has been awarded €10m (£8.8m) from the European Research Council (ERC) for its GeneMotors project. The project seeks to understand how a new class of molecular motors - so-called SMC protein complexes - work and how they regulate our genome in a bid to answer key questions about human development and disease.Professor Bickmore will work with Cees Dekker from Delft University of Technology, Leonid Mirny from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Benjamin Rowland from the Netherlands Cancer Institute, to tackle this puzzle which is too complex for any single team to solve. Collaborating over six years, GeneMotors will harness the team’s complementary expertise in theoretical modelling, biophysics, biochemistry and genetics to understand how SMC motors work, how they are controlled and how they regulate gene expression. Our genome is a very long polymer with a dynamic structure that is crucial for its function. A new class of molecular motors, so-called SMC protein complexes, are key to this spatial organisation, reeling our genome into large loops. But how do these motors work and how do they regulate our genome?The new knowledge generated will help us understand key questions in human development and disease - how our cells silence the genes of invading viruses, and how our own genes are so very precisely turned on at the right time and in the right place in the hundreds of different types of cells in our body. Professor Wendy Bickmore Director of MRC Human Genetics Unit, IGC A total of 66 research teams, bringing together 239 scientists, received a share of €684m in ERC Synergy Grants. This funding, which is part of the EU’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme, aims to foster collaboration between outstanding researchers, enabling them to combine their expertise, knowledge and resources to push the boundaries of scientific discovery. ERC Synergy Grant ERC press release Wendy Bickmore Research Group Tags 2025 Publication date 07 Nov, 2025
