Dr Andrew Hesketh

Dr Andy Hesketh is an Experimental Officer in Bioinformatics based in the Brighton Genomics laboratory.

Andy provides bioinformatics and computational biology support for projects undertaken by the genomics facility, and has broad interests in exploiting functional genomics data to understand biological systems.

Dr Hesketh was awarded his degree and PhD in Pharmaceutical Science from the University of Nottingham. He subsequently trained as a Molecular Microbiologist at the National Food Research Institute in Tsukuba, Japan, where he developed an interest in researching the regulation of antibiotic biosynthesis in actinomycete bacteria. Andy continued this research on his return to the UK at the John Innes Centre, Norwich, where he was able to apply proteomics and transcriptomics approaches to the study of antibiotic production and antibiotic resistance responses. 

Andy was appointed Senior Research Associate in transcriptomics at the Cambridge Systems Biology Centre, University of Cambridge, in 2009. This completed a transition towards functional genomics research, and marked both an increased use of computational approaches in his research and a diversification in the biological systems and research questions being studied.

Andy joined Brighton Genomics in 2017 where he continues to develop his interests in mining complex –omics datasets for biological information in both prokaryotic and eukaryotic experimental systems.

Andrew Hesketh

My research interests

I enjoy investigating and trying to understand biological systems and processes through the analysis and interpretation of genome-wide –omics data sets. This has grown out of a long-standing interest in studying the regulation of metabolism in microorganisms with biotechnological applications (yeast and streptomycetes), and the analysis of bacterial antibiotic resistance, and has involved a transition from full-time wet-lab research to full-time computational biology work. These days, my time is divided fairly equally between work on projects involving bacterial data sets and those originating from fungal and higher eukaryotic systems. My wet-lab research experience, which has included collection of data for proteomics, transcriptomics and metabolomics studies, ensures that I am fully aware of the challenges and effort required to generate experimental data. On the computational and data analysis side of things, my skills and experience have been built up over the last 15 years or so, starting with research positions at the John Innes Centre (Norwich, UK) and the Cambridge Systems Biology Centre (University of Cambridge, UK) and continuing in my position here at Brighton Genomics. R, together with its extensive library of open-source software packages, is the workhorse for most of my data analysis and visualisation tasks but I also use Cytoscape for network analysis, and a range of open-source unix-based software tools for analysis pipelines involving next generation sequencing data eg. RNA-seq, Ribo-seq.

Research activity

Current research projects:

Bioinformatics and computational biology support for research collaborations and genomics services in Brighton Genomics: www.brighton.ac.uk/brighton-genomics

Previous research projects:

  • Understanding the control of cell metabolism and growth in Saccharomyces cerevisiae through manipulation of purine nucleotide concentrations (with Prof. Steve Oliver, University of Cambridge)
  • Transcriptomic responses to cefotaxime in resistant environmental isolates of Escherichia coli and Staphylococcus aureus (with Prof. Luca Guardabassi, University of Copenhagen)
  • Adaptive responses to glycopeptide antibiotics in Gram-positive bacteria (with Dr Hee-Jeon Hong, University of Cambridge and Oxford-Brookes University)
  • Misfolded protein stress during heterologous protein expression in Pichia pastoris (with Prof. Steve Oliver, University of Cambridge)
  • The stringent response and the regulation of antibiotic production in streptomycetes (with Prof. Mervyn Bibb, John Innes Centre)

Social media

ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0001-5220-8733

 

ResearchGate: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Andy_Hesketh

Contact me

Contact information:

Dr Andrew Hesketh

Experimental Officer

Pharmacy and Biomolecular Sciences
Moulsecoomb
Brighton
BN2 4GJ

Telephone: +44 (0)1273 642077

Email: a.hesketh@brighton.ac.uk

Biography

My first degree, in Pharmacy, was obtained from the University of Nottingham in 1987. After a year spent working as a Scientific Officer in a Home Office Forensic Science laboratory I returned to Nottingham to study for a PhD (1988-91) under the supervision of Dr Paul Dewick. My graduate studies focused on understanding the biosynthesis of trichothene toxins by Fusaria fungi which commonly infect cereal crops. I continued researching natural product toxins as a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Nottingham before being awarded a Japan Science and Technology Agency Fellowship hosted from 1995-1997 by Professor Kozo Ochi at the National Food Research Institute in Tsukuba.

In Japan I retrained in molecular microbiology whilst researching the regulation of antibiotic biosynthesis in streptomycetes and the role played by the bacterial stringent response in this control. With the help of a Royal Society Return Fellowship, I returned to the UK in 1997 to continue this research in the lab of Prof. Mervyn Bibb FRS in the Department of Molecular Microbiology at the John Innes Centre Norwich. In 1999 I was recruited onto the Streptromyces Investigating Gene Function initiative in the lab of Prof. Keith Chater FRS at the John Innes Centre where I developed proteomics methods for analysing the newly sequenced Streptomyces coelicolor genome.

In 2006 I moved back to the lab of Prof. Bibb as a Senior Research Associate to apply transcriptomics methods to study the regulation of antibiotic biosynthesis in S. coelicolor, and in 2009 was appointed Senior Research Associate in transcriptomics at the Cambridge Systems Biology Centre, University of Cambridge. My research at Cambridge, based in the lab of Prof. Steve Oliver FMedSci FAAAS, was primarily focused on understanding the transcriptional regulation of metabolism in model yeast systems, although I was able to maintain an interest in Streptomyces research and the regulation of bacterial antibiotic resistance through collaborative studies.

In 2017 I moved to the University of Brighton to take up a Bioinformatics position in the newly established Brighton Genomics Centre headed by Prof. Colin Smith. In this role I am continuing to develop my interests and experience in mining complex –omics datasets for biological information, and am actively involved in research projects studying both prokaryotic and eukaryotic systems.