Dr Evelyne Deery

About

Dr Evelyne Deery (née Raux) started her journey on vitamin B₁₂ biosynthesis many years ago in the Centre de Génétique Moléculaire within the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in Gif-sur-Yvette near Paris. The project was led by Dr Alain Rambach and was aimed to develop a genetically engineered E. coli strain overproducing vitamin B₁₂.

During the last two years of this project, the French team had been collaborating with Prof. Martin Warren, Queen Mary University of London (QMUL). She finally joined the British team when they moved to University College London (UCL).

She completed her PhD in 1999 and her thesis title is ‘Biosynthesis of cobalamin (vitamin B₁₂) in Salmonella typhimurium & Bacillus megaterium de Bary; Characterisation of the anaerobic pathway’.

Since then, she has been involved in many aspects of vitamin B₁₂ biosynthesis in the anaerobic and aerobic pathways, in other modified tetrapyrrole biosynthetic pathways such as coenzyme F₄₃₀, sirohaem or haem. She developed a method to trap B₁₂ intermediates, a novel way to elucidate intermediates of complex biochemical pathways, as well as engineered many strains to produce different B₁₂ intermediates along the pathway.

In the last few years, she has been working mainly at the development of an engineered E. coli strain overproducing vitamin B₁₂ and will pursue this project for the next 5 years. (ELEMENTAL WP3.1 Reduction of cobalt waste in fermentation for vitamin B₁₂ production.)

Key areas of expertise: 

• Vitamin B12 biosynthesis
• Microbiology & molecular biology
• CRISPR in E. coli