A Cambridge academic whose groundbreaking research has led to a deeper understanding of DNA has become a Dame in the New Year Honours list.

Jean Thomas, Professor of Macromolecular Biochemistry, has been recognised for her services to biochemistry. She was awarded a CBE for services to science in 1993.

She and her team investigate the structure of chromatin - the complex of proteins and DNA that constitutes chromosomes - and its role in the repression and activation of genes. Both the intrinsic histone proteins and abundant accessory proteins that modulate chromatin structure are under study. Another aspect of the group's work focuses on proteins that bend DNA and on the structure of these, both alone and bound to DNA, using NMR spectroscopy and other techniques.

Professor Thomas has been in Cambridge since 1967 and is a Fellow of New Hall. She became a professor in 1991 and was Director of the Cambridge Centre for Molecular Recognition from 1993 to 2003.

She was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1986, is a member of the Board of Governors of the Wellcome Trust, President of the Biochemical Society, and until recently was a Trustee of the British Museum (1994-2004).

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