James graduated from the University of Warwick (2000) in Physics, before completing Maths Part III at Cambridge (2001). James then studied for a joint PhD in Biology and Theoretical Physics at the University of Warwick, with supervision from Professors Andrew Millar and Matthew Turner. During his PhD James used an iterative process of experiment and theory to propose a new feedback loop in the plant circadian (24-hour) clock. For this work he was awarded the Promega Young Geneticist of the Year award (2007).

My main research interest is to gain a quantitative understanding of how cells respond to environmental signals. To do this, I have found that it is critical to observe cellular behaviour at the single cell level as traditional approaches that take an average from a population can obscure heterogeneous responses and novel dynamics. For example, by examining B. subtilis gene expression at the single cell level, I have discovered that the alternative sigma factor sigB is activated in discrete stochastic pulses, a behaviour missed by previous bulk studies (see figure).

J Young*, JCW Locke*, MB Elowitz, Rate of environmental change determines stress response specificity, PNAS, 2013, In Press, *joint first authors. JCW Locke*, J Young*, M Fontes, MB Elowitz, Stochastic pulse regulation in bacterial stress response, Science, 2011 Oct 21;334(6054):366-9, *joint first authors. C Troein*, JCW Locke*, MS Turner, AJ Millar, Weather and seasons together demand complex biological clocks, Current Biology 2009 19(22):1961-4.*joint first authors.