Dr Zachary Ardern

I am a postdoctoral fellow at the Wellcome Sanger Institute (SEED Fellowship - Sanger Evolutionary and Epidemiological Dynamics).

I am primarily researching the evolution of new proteins in bacteria and viruses, investigating the structures and functions of evolutionarily young proteins and their integration into gene regulatory networks, as well as the long-term evolution of proteins. 
 
Most of my publications have related to proteins encoded by overlapping genes (genes encoded in alternative reading frames) - this has included publications on synthetic gene overlaps, and I am interested in their potential applications in engineering biology.