David Klenerman - Biography#

Klenerman’s research is focused on developing and applying biophysical methods to biological and biomedical problems.

His work, using fluorescence and scanning probe microscopy, has provided new insights into a variety of biomolecular complexes as well as the processes of protein folding and misfolding.

Klenerman has also developed techniques to image individual protein complexes on the surface of living cells to directly follow the processes occurring as the adaptive immune response is triggered.

His single molecule fluorescence methods are also being actively applied to study the molecular basis of neurodegenerative disease. They have been used to identify the key molecular events in protein misfolding and the aggregation of beta amyloid, tau and alpha synuclein, and to investigate how oligomers of these proteins interact with live neurons and initiate cellular damage.
He is well known for co-inventing a method of high-speed DNA sequencing, Solexa (Illumina) sequencing. The technique, now widely used, utilises a massively parallel array of DNA on a surface and reversible terminator that, upon incorporation into DNA, enable the identification of single nucleotides based on their fluorescence. He is also a scientific founder of the biotech company Solexa.