Gerry Wake

Professor Wake has an international reputation in two areas of biochemistry. In the relatively short period of six years he made substantial contributions to milk protein chemistry. His understanding of the biological activity of kappa-casein provided one of the first recognitions of partitioning of polar and non-polar amino acids within a protein. Subsequently, Wake has gained recognition for a series of fundamental discoveries concerning the mechanism of bacterial chromosome replication. He provided a break-through in the understanding of multi-forked chromosomes and published the definitive work of bidirectionality of DNA replication. He has utilised Bacillus subtilis sporulation and germination to penetrating advantage in studying the control of replication and cell division, showing that septation can occur without chromosome termination and developing a novel method of analysis of the replication terminus region. Wake participated in one of the earliest demonstrations of in vitro semi­conservative replication of DNA polymerase and he also provided the earliest conclusive evidence for concatamers of the chromosome of bacteriophage lambda.

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