Shamus Burns

Subject Area Leader - Biology, Department of Biological and Geographical Sciences
School of Applied Sciences
Member, Cellular and Molecular Models of Disease Centre

Phone01484 472428
EmailS.P.Burns@hud.ac.uk
Websitehttps://research.hud.ac.uk

Accepting PhD Students

PhD projects

Substrate specificity of Hexokinases

Research output per year

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Personal profile

Biography

After my first degree in Chemistry at Royal Holloway College I pursued biochemistry research and undertook a PhD using NMR to investigate metabolic disease. I continued to do Post-Doctoral research in liver biochemistry at Queen Mary’s School of Medicine, being appointed as a Lecturer in the new Medical School in 2000. My work there revealed a novel mechanism by which the liver could regulate blood glucose, and much of my subsequent work is related to biochemical mechanisms of glycemic homoestasis instigated by the hexokinase class of enzymes. After discovering a mammalian polyphosphate dependent glucokinase that is inhibited by ATP my work is now acutely foucsed on understanding how very similar active sites in different hexokinases can discriminate between different phosphorylation substrates. A molecular explanation for this specificity will impact directly on our understanding of the role of glucokinase in diabetes and hexokinases in cancer. Our novel NMR enzymology now gives us the power to answer key questions about how hexokinases obtain their specificity that have remianed unanswered for decades. I moved to the Department of Chemical and Biological Sciences (now Biological and Geographical Sciences) at Huddersfield in the Summer of 2004, taking on significant new teaching duties as a senior Lecturer, and appointed to Subject Leader (Biochemical sciences) in 2014.

I am an active member of the Biochemical Society (the Local Ambassador at Huddersfield and a previous member of Council (2011) and I regulalry paritcipate in promoting biochemsitry in local Schools.

Research Expertise and Interests

Biochemistry
Regulation of metabolism
NMR / MRS in vivo and in vitro to investigate mechanisms of metabolic control
Fetal programming of adult disease
Glucokinase and hexokinase biochemistry

Research Degree Supervision

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Research Output

22 Article
3 Letter
1 Comment/debate

A novel mammalian glucokinase exhibiting exclusive inorganic polyphosphate dependence in the cell nucleus

Ali, A., Wathes, D. C., Swali, A., Burns, H. & Burns, S., 1 Dec 2017, In : Biochemistry and Biophysics Reports. 12, p. 151-157 7 p.

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article

Open Access

5 Citations (Scopus)

Epigenetic modification of the renin-angiotensin system in the fetal programming of hypertension

Bogdarina, I., Welham, S., King, P. J., Burns, S. P. & Clark, A. J. L., 2 Mar 2007, In : Circulation Research. 100, 4, p. 520-526 7 p.

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article

351 Citations (Scopus)

Metabolic acidosis and other determinants of hemoglobin-oxygen dissociation in severe childhood Plasmodium falciparum malaria

Sasi, P., Burns, S. P., Waruiru, C., English, M., Hobson, C. L., King, C. G., Mosobo, M., Beech, J. S., Iles, R. A., Boucher, B. J. & Cohen, R. D., Aug 2007, In : American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene. 77, 2, p. 256-260 5 p.

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article

Open Access