He is an honorary professor at the Department of Genetics, Evolution and Environment at the University College London in the United Kingdom.

He obtained a BSc from King's College London in 1972 from the School of Biological Sciences.

He moved in 1992 to Sweden where he became the first professor in Plant Cell Biology at Lund University.

He stayed in Lund until 2005 when he became Professor of Biochemistry at Queen Mary University of London.

[6] Briefly, the CoRR hypothesis states that endosymbiotic organelles such as mitochondria and chloroplasts retain genomes to provide for regulation of gene expression by electron transport and the redox state of the organelle.