Rate My Professor Ian Eperon

Ian Eperon is Professor of Biochemistry in the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology within the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Leicester. He earned a first-class honours degree in Biochemistry from the University of Bristol in 1977. He then pursued postgraduate studies at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, where he completed his PhD in 1981 under Dr. Fred Sanger, investigating the sequence of mitochondrial rRNA and tRNA genes and the process of transcription. After a one-year postdoctoral position in the same laboratory, he held an SERC-NATO postdoctoral fellowship at Yale University from 1982 to 1983 with Professor Joan Steitz, focusing on RNA splicing. In 1984, he joined the University of Leicester as a lecturer in the Department of Biochemistry, progressing to Reader and receiving a personal chair as Professor of Biochemistry in 2000.

Professor Eperon's research specializes in the mechanisms of mammalian pre-mRNA splicing, encompassing splice site selection, regulation of alternative splicing by sequence motifs, RNA secondary structures such as G-quadruplexes, and proteins including PTB, SR proteins, and U1 snRNP. His laboratory employs advanced single-molecule fluorescence microscopy in crude nuclear extracts to study the dynamics, stoichiometries, and competition in spliceosome assembly and RNA-protein complexes. Early landmark contributions include determining the sequence and organization of the human mitochondrial genome (Nature, 1981; 13,301 citations) and the complete bovine mitochondrial DNA sequence (Nature, 1982; 1,923 citations). Subsequent work advanced splicing modulation, such as antisense oligoribonucleotides to restore dystrophin expression in mdx muscle cells (Human Molecular Genetics, 1998) and bifunctional oligonucleotides enhancing SMN2 exon 7 splicing for spinal muscular atrophy (Human Molecular Genetics, 2003). Recent publications feature exon-independent recruitment of SRSF1 by U1 snRNP (EMBO Journal, 2022) and biophysical analysis of Bcl-x pre-mRNA G-quadruplex interactions (Frontiers in Molecular Biosciences, 2022). These efforts extend to therapeutic strategies redirecting splicing in genetic diseases like Duchenne muscular dystrophy and cancers. His scholarship, with over 17,000 citations, has profoundly shaped RNA biology and splicing therapeutics.