Professor Frey, born in Zuerich 1951 studied chemistry and biochemistry at the Universities of Geneva and Uppsala (Sweden) and earned his PhD in Molecular Biology at the University of Geneva 1980. He worked as a research fellow at the Max Planck Institute in Berlin and the University of Geneva on plasmid incompatibility and genetic engineering of soil and water bacteria. In 1986 he was invited Professor at the University of Québec at Montréal, Canada. Since 1987 he leads the research group on molecular mechanisms of bacterial pathogenicity and vaccine development at the Institute of Veterinary Bacteriology. Since 2000 he is full professor and director of the institute of Veterinary Bacteriology at the Vetsuisse Faculty, University of Bern. He was Dean of the faculty from 2004 - 2007.
His research interests are the molecular mechanisms of pathogenic Mycoplasma species where he unravelled the uptake mechanism and metabolism of glycerol as a major virulence attribute of M. mycoides subsp. mycoides SC; of Pasteurellaceae, where he detected RTX toxins as predominant virulence attributes of Actinobacillus pleuropneumoniae, and pathogenic Aeromonas species where he detected Type III secretion as the central virulence attribute of A. salmonicida subsp. salmonicida, the etiological agent of furunculosis of salmon, trout and char. He is member of the IOM since 1992 and is member of the international committee on systematics of prokaryotes, subcommittee on the taxonomy of Mollicutes. |
