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IU Bloomington

Steve Bell

Department of Molecular and Cellular Biochemistry

Expert Bio

Distinguished Professor Steve Bell he has a joint appointment in the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biochemistry and the Department of Biology. He became chair of the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biochemistry in July 2018, following a stint as interim chair in 2014-15. His lab investigates the machineries that duplicate, express, organize and segregate the genome.

Bell, from Glasgow, Scotland, obtained his undergraduate degree in molecular biology and a Ph.D. in molecular genetics from Glasgow University, studying the bacterial transposon Tn7 in Dave Sherrat’s lab; he then worked as a post-doc in Dave Barry’s lab studying transcription in trypanosomes.

In December 1995, he moved to a post-doc position in Steve Jackson’s lab in the Gurdon Institute, Cambridge, where he started working on archaea. In Jackson’s lab, he studied basal and regulated archaeal transcription. Setting up his own lab in the MRC Cancer Cell Unit, Cambridge, Bell switched to studying archaeal DNA replication. In 2007, he became a professor of microbiology at Oxford University before leaving for IU in 2012.

Areas of Expertise

DNA replication, archaea, extremophiles, chromosome biology.