Lynne was born in Leeds. She read Biochemistry at Oxford University then moved to M.I.T. for her Ph.D. research with Paul Schimmel. As a postdoc with Bill DeGrado, she began the new field of protein design, moving to Yale to start her own lab in 1990. After many productive years at Yale University, where she was Professor of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry; Professor for Chemistry; Director of the Raymond and Beverley Sackler Institute for Biological, Physical and Engineering Sciences she moved to the University of Edinburgh in 2018, as Chair of Interdisciplinary Science in the Centre for Synthetic and Systems Biology, Institute for Quantitative Biology, Biochemistry and Biotechnology.

We are interested in protein-protein interactions and the ways in which the affinity and specificity of such interactions can be manipulated. Our studies include computational and experimental approaches, ranging from the atomic design and characterization of novel binding modules to the re-wiring of cellular pathways. We also do work to develop novel biomaterials and in vivo imaging techniques.

I will describe how transient peptide-peptide and peptide-protein interactions can be used inside living cells to perform a new type of super-resolution imaging that is accessible to all.

I will also describe how by harnessing peptides and proteins with distinctive physical properties we can create new methods of surface display and new classes of biomaterials with user-specified physical and biochemical properties.