Richard Treisman

Career and research After his PhD, Treisman pursued postdoctoral research at Harvard University on globin gene expression and thalassemia genes with Tom Maniatis. In 1984, he joined the Medical Research Council (MRC) Laboratory of Molecular Biology (LMB) at the University of Cambridge, where he started working on how growth factors control transcription. Initially focusing on the Fos gene, he identified the transcription factor Serum response factor (SRF) and cloned its gene, before returning to London in 1988.

He showed that the TCF family of SRF cofactors are targets for Mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) signalling, and demonstrated that the MRTF transcription cofactors are novel G-actin binding proteins that sense fluctuations in G-actin concentration. He continues to focus on SRF's regulatory cofactors and their cognate signalling pathways. he received the EMBO Gold Medal in 1995 and the Louis-Jeantet Prize for Medicine in 2002. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1994 and knighted in the 2016 Birthday Honours.