Douglas Bruce Kell (born 7 April 1953) is a British biochemist and Research

Professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an Academy, academic rank at university, universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a "person who pr ...

Systems Biology Systems biology is the computational modeling, computational and mathematical analysis and modeling of complex biological systems. It is a biology-based interdisciplinary field of study that focuses on complex interactions within biological syst ...

in the Institute of Systems, Molecular and Integrative Biology at the

University of Liverpool , mottoeng = These days of peace foster learning , established = 1881 – University College Liverpool1884 – affiliated to the federal Victoria Universityhttp://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukla/2004/4 University of Manchester Act 200 ...

, and Chief Scientific Officer o
Epoch Biodesign
Ltd. He was previously at the School of Chemistry at the

University of Manchester , mottoeng = Knowledge, Wisdom, Humanity , established = 2004 – University of Manchester Predecessor institutions: 1956 – UMIST (as university college; university 1994) 1904 – Victoria University of Manchester 1880 – Victoria Univer ...

, based in the

Manchester Institute of Biotechnology The Manchester Institute of Biotechnology, formerly the Manchester Interdisciplinary Biocentre (MIB) is a research institute of the University of Manchester, England. Role The centre has been designed to enable academic communities to explore ...

(MIB). He founded and led the Manchester Centre for Integrative Systems Biology. He served as

chief executive officer A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a central executive officer (CEO), chief administrator officer (CAO) or just chief executive (CE), is one of a number of corporate executives charged with the management of an organization especially ...

(CEO) of the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) from 2008 to 2013.

Education

Kell was educated at Hydneye House in Sussex, Bradfield College in Berkshire (where he was Top Scholar) and St John's College, Oxford. He graduated from the

University of Oxford , mottoeng = The Lord is my light , established = , endowment = £6.1 billion (including colleges) (2019) , budget = £2.145 billion (2019–20) , chancellor ...

with a

Bachelor of Arts Bachelor of arts (BA or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree course is generally completed in three or four years ...

degree in

Biochemistry Biochemistry or biological chemistry is the study of chemical processes within and relating to living organisms. A sub-discipline of both chemistry and biology, biochemistry may be divided into three fields: structural biology, enzymology and ...

in 1975 (with a Distinction in Chemical Pharmacology) followed by a

Doctor of Philosophy A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common Academic degree, degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields ...

in 1978 with a thesis on the Bioenergetics of '' Paracoccus denitrificans,'' supervised by Stuart Ferguson and Philip John. From 1978 to 2002 he worked at Aberystwyth University, moving to the

University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology The University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST) was a university based in the centre of the city of Manchester in England. It specialised in technical and scientific subjects and was a major centre for research. On 1 Oct ...

(UMIST) in 2002 as an Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC)/

Royal Society of Chemistry The Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) is a learned society (professional association) in the United Kingdom with the goal of "advancing the chemistry, chemical sciences". It was formed in 1980 from the amalgamation of the Chemical Society, the Ro ...

(RSC) Research Chair in Bioanalytical Sciences. (

UMIST The University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST) was a university based in the centre of the city of Manchester in England. It specialised in technical and scientific subjects and was a major centre for research. On 1 Oct ...

merged with the

Victoria University of Manchester The Victoria University of Manchester, usually referred to as simply the University of Manchester, was a university in Manchester, England. It was founded in 1851 as Owens College. In 1880, the college joined the federal Victoria University. Afte ...

in 2004, to become

The University of Manchester , mottoeng = Knowledge, Wisdom, Humanity , established = 2004 – University of Manchester Predecessor institutions: 1956 – UMIST (as university college; university 1994) 1904 – Victoria University of Manchester 1880 – Victoria Univer ...

.) He moved to the

(which was the world's first University to have a Department of Biochemistry) in 2018.

Research and career

Kell's primary research interests are in

systems biology Systems biology is the computational modeling, computational and mathematical analysis and modeling of complex biological systems. It is a biology-based interdisciplinary field of study that focuses on complex interactions within biological syst ...

synthetic biology Synthetic biology (SynBio) is a multidisciplinary area of research that seeks to create new biological parts, devices, and systems, or to redesign systems that are already found in nature. It is a branch of science that encompasses a broad ran ...

and computational biology. He has also been heavily involved in the development of multivariate scientific instrumentation and the attendant machine learning software (his first paper on artificial neural networks was in 1992). He has written extensively on the role of microbes as agents of supposedly 'non-communicable', chronic infectious diseases. His publications are mostly

open access Open access (OA) is a set of principles and a range of practices through which research outputs are distributed online, free of access charges or other barriers. With open access strictly defined (according to the 2001 definition), or libre op ...

and are very widely cited, with an

H-index The ''h''-index is an author-level metric that measures both the productivity and citation impact of the publications, initially used for an individual scientist or scholar. The ''h''-index correlates with obvious success indicators such as winn ...

at Google Scholar in excess of 120. According to

Google Scholar Google Scholar is a freely accessible web search engine that indexes the full text or metadata of scholarly literature across an array of publishing formats and disciplines. Released in beta in November 2004, the Google Scholar index includes p ...

his most cited peer-reviewed research papers are in

functional genomics Functional genomics is a field of molecular biology that attempts to describe gene (and protein) functions and interactions. Functional genomics make use of the vast data generated by genomic and transcriptomic projects (such as genome sequencing ...

metabolomics Metabolomics is the scientific study of chemical processes involving metabolites, the small molecule substrates, intermediates, and products of cell metabolism. Specifically, metabolomics is the "systematic study of the unique chemical fingerprin ...

and the yeast genome. He has also been involved in research to create a robot scientist in collaboration with Ross King, Stephen Muggleton and Steve Oliver, as well as several projects in

. He is heavily involved in the study of membrane transporters, and their necessary involvement in the transmembrane uptake of pharmaceutical drugs. He tends to choose scientific problems in which the prevailing orthodoxy is clearly incorrect. To this end, he has recently returned to the study of bioenergetics, summarising the detailed evidence against the prevailing wisdom of chemiosmotic coupling in

oxidative Redox (reduction–oxidation, , ) is a type of chemical reaction in which the oxidation states of substrate change. Oxidation is the loss of electrons or an increase in the oxidation state, while reduction is the gain of electrons or a d ...

and photosynthetic phosphorylation, replacing it with a protet-based model. With his collaborato
Resia Pretorius
Kell discovered the amyloidogenic

clotting Coagulation, also known as clotting, is the process by which blood changes from a liquid to a gel, forming a blood clot. It potentially results in hemostasis, the cessation of blood loss from a damaged vessel, followed by repair. The mechanism o ...

of blood, involving the

amyloid Amyloids are aggregates of proteins characterised by a fibrillar morphology of 7–13 nm in diameter, a beta sheet (β-sheet) secondary structure (known as cross-β) and ability to be stained by particular dyes, such as Congo red. In the huma ...

ogenic self-assembly of the clotting protein fibrin into highly stable

beta-sheet The beta sheet, (β-sheet) (also β-pleated sheet) is a common motif of the regular protein secondary structure. Beta sheets consist of beta strands (β-strands) connected laterally by at least two or three backbone hydrogen bonds, forming a g ...

s that — unlike regular clots — are resistant to

plasmin Plasmin is an important enzyme () present in blood that degrades many blood plasma proteins, including fibrin clots. The degradation of fibrin is termed fibrinolysis. In humans, the plasmin protein (in the zymogen form of plasminogen) is encode ...

, the enzyme responsible for breaking up clots (

fibrinolysis Fibrinolysis is a process that prevents blood clots from growing and becoming problematic. Primary fibrinolysis is a normal body process, while secondary fibrinolysis is the breakdown of clots due to a medicine, a medical disorder, or some other ...

). They report that such amyloidogenic clotting appears to mostly caused by

infectious agents In biology, a pathogen ( el, πάθος, "suffering", "passion" and , "producer of") in the oldest and broadest sense, is any organism or agent that can produce disease. A pathogen may also be referred to as an infectious agent, or simply a germ ...

, even in supposedly non-infectious diseases. Kell and Pretorius report that such fibrin amyloid microclots (fibrinaloids) seem to be of major significance in

long COVID Long COVID or long-haul COVID (also known as post-COVID-19 syndrome, post-COVID-19 condition, post-acute sequelae of COVID-19 (PASC), or chronic COVID syndrome (CCS)) is a condition characterized by long-term health problems persisting or appe ...

. In 1988, he was a Founding Director of Aber Instruments, based at Aberystwyth Science Park (originally at the Centre for Alternative Technology,

Machynlleth Machynlleth () is a market town, community and electoral ward in Powys, Wales and within the historic boundaries of Montgomeryshire. It is in the Dyfi Valley at the intersection of the A487 and the A489 roads. At the 2001 Census it had a popul ...

, Wales). In 2019 he was a Founding Director with Jacob Nathan of Mellizyme Ltd, no
Epoch Biodesign
He cofounded PhenUTest Ltd in 2021. He is an Associated Scientific Director of the Centre for Biosustainability at the

Technical University of Denmark The Technical University of Denmark ( da, Danmarks Tekniske Universitet), often simply referred to as DTU, is a polytechnic university and school of engineering. It was founded in 1829 at the initiative of Hans Christian Ørsted as Denmark's fi ...

, where he runs the Flux Optimisation and Bioanalytics Group. Kell's research has been funded by the EU, the BBSRC, the Medical Research Council (MRC) and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC). His former doctoral students and

postdoctoral researcher A postdoctoral fellow, postdoctoral researcher, or simply postdoc, is a person professionally conducting research after the completion of their doctoral studies (typically a PhD). The ultimate goal of a postdoctoral research position is to pu ...

s include

Pedro Pedrosa Mendes Pedro Pedrosa Mendes is a professor of Systems Biology, computational systems biology in the Department of Computer Science, University of Manchester, Department of Computer Science at the University of Manchester. He is a member of the Manchester ...

. His monograph ''Belief: the baggage behind our being'' was published in 2018.Kell DB, Welch GR (2018) Belief: the baggage behind our being. OSF preprints

Awards and honours

Kell was appointed

Commander of the Order of the British Empire The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a British order of chivalry, rewarding contributions to the arts and sciences, work with charitable and welfare organisations, and public service outside the civil service. It was established o ...

(CBE) in the 2014 New Year Honours, for services to science and research. Kell is also a

Fellow A fellow is a concept whose exact meaning depends on context. In learned or professional societies, it refers to a privileged member who is specially elected in recognition of their work and achievements. Within the context of higher education ...

of the

Learned Society of Wales The Learned Society of Wales ( Welsh: Cymdeithas Ddysgedig Cymru) is a learned society and charity that exists to "celebrate, recognise, preserve, protect and encourage excellence in all of the scholarly disciplines", and to serve the Welsh natio ...

(FLSW), a

Fellow of the Royal Society of Biology Fellowship of the Royal Society of Biology (FRSB), previously Fellowship of the Society of Biology (FSB), is an award and fellowship granted to individuals that the Royal Society of Biology has adjudged to have made a "prominent contribution to ...

(FRSB) and a

Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science Fellowship of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (FAAAS) is an honor accorded by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) to distinguished persons who are members of the Association. Fellows are elected ...

(FAAS).

References

, - {{DEFAULTSORT:Kell, Douglas Bruce Academics of the University of Manchester Alumni of Aberystwyth University Living people Alumni of St John's College, Oxford Commanders of the Order of the British Empire Fellows of the Learned Society of Wales Fellows of the Royal Society of Biology Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science British biochemists People educated at Bradfield College 1953 births Academics of the University of Liverpool