I joined the University of Sheffield as a lecturer in 2002 following training in molecular pharmacology. My research training was in microbial molecular biology and my first postdoc was in Sheffield with Professor Anne Moir in the Department of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology. I subsequently worked with Professor Caroline Dive in Manchester, studying the regulation of apoptosis in response to chemotherapeutic drugs. It was through this research that I became interested in the regulation of apoptosis by butyrate.

 Work in my group examines the relationship between diet, short-chain fatty acid production and metabolism and cell fate in the normal and neoplastic colon. A detailed summary is found on my Research Page . Butyrate and cell fate determination: Butyrate is of particular interest as it is described as an inhibitor of histone deacetylases – (although we disagree with this: Corfe, 2012) is in clinical trials or clinical use, yet it is also a fermentation product of the gut microbiome present at pharmacologically active concentrations in the normal healthy colon lumen. It has been implicated as a mechanism for cancer prevention by fibre. A growing literature recognises protein acetylation as a regulatory mechanism