Visiting The Francis Crick Institute: Ancient DNA And Groundbreaking Discoveries

Next to St Pancras Station and behind the British Library you will find another very important building, this one particularly in the world of science: the Francis Crick Institute, otherwise known as The Crick.

It is the single largest biomedical laboratory under one roof in all of Europe and carries out world-leading research. They also have regular free exhibitions for the public to visit. Their current one is called We Go Way Back, covering the study of ancient DNA and what it can teach us about the history of humanity. It is free to visit and on until the 2nd July 2027.

Establishing the Francis Crick Institute

In 2006 the Cooksey Report carried out a review of UK health research funding and suggested that closer collaboration between departments would be beneficial.

Consequently in 2007, six major bodies partnered to plan a new world-class centre: the Medical Research Council, Cancer Research UK, Wellcome, UCL, Imperial College London, and King’s College London.

The project was later named after Sir Francis Crick (1916-2004). Crick was a British molecular biologist, biophysicist, and neuroscientist best known for co-discovering the double-helix structure of DNA in 1953 and that the information is stored as a code. From 1951 he had worked alongside, the then 23 year old, James Watson at Cambridge University’s Cavendish Laboratory. They were building on work by Rosalind Franklin, Maurice Wilkins and others.

In 1962 Crick was awarded a Nobel prize in Physiology or Medicine alongside James Watson and Maurice Wilkins. Rosalind Franklin had tragically passed away from ovarian cancer in 1958 at the age of 37.

You can see the Nobel Prize medal in the lobby of the Crick today.

The Building

Construction began in 2011 on the new site which had previously been the St Pancras Goods Yard. A time capsule was laid 12 metres into the foundations by Gabrielle Crick, Francis’ daughter.

It contains Francis Crick’s California license plate reading ‘AT GC’, referencing the DNA base pairs adenine-thymine and guanine-cytosine. Also in there are letters from world-leading scientists, artwork by local children and two biographies of Francis Crick.

Designed by architects HOK and PLP Architecture and constructed by Laing O’Rourke, the building features a huge curved roof, inspired by nearby St Pancras and a terracotta masonry base to fit in with the red brick of St Pancras Station and the British Library.

The project was completed in August 2016 and handed over to the researchers. Today over 2,000 researchers, students, staff and others work here.

The interior features a huge, bright atrium space, where you can see into the working spaces through glass walls. The whole place is designed to be open and transparent to encourage movement, social interaction and collaboration between scientists and departments.

We Go Way Back

The We Go Way Back exhibition opened in July 2026 and, as mentioned above, is all about how cutting-edge research into ancient DNA is teaching us about the history of humankind. This includes both the broad: human migration, evolution and diseases, to the more specific such as how individuals fitted into society.

The exhibition starts with a bit of background about the Ancient Genomics team at The Crick and how DNA is extracted from ancient bones. For example, the richest source of DNA from ancient skeletons can be extracted from teeth and a tiny ear bone called the incus. This is because their bone density and mineralised structure protects the DNA from decay, destruction or microbes.

Disease And The Black Death

They have, for example, done a lot of work in looking at the yersinia pestis, the bacterium that causes the Bubonic plague.

The Black Death in the 1340s is thought to have killed about 30-60% of the population of Europe. In dense urban areas like London, the death toll was around 50-60%. Mass burial grounds had to be created such as what is now Charterhouse Square in Smithfield.

charterhouse square — _{Charterhouse Square in Smithfield}

Studies at the Crick by scientists such as Dr Pontus Skoglund and Pooja Swali, have identified Yersinia Pestis in Bronze Age remains dating back around 4,000 years. This is much earlier than was previously thought.

This ancient strain lacked specific virulence and transmission genes (such as those required for flea-borne transmission) that later turned the medieval Black Death into such a devastating pandemic. They have also looked at how the Black Death acted as a powerful selective pressure on the human immune system.

The research does not just give us a better understanding of diseases in past however, it also allows us to understand how we can better tackle health issues today, such as Inflammatory Bowel Disease. They have an interesting short film about this in the exhibition.

The Bronze Age Revelation

There were a couple of really interesting case studies about how research has unlocked a fascinating historical story/mystery/nugget of information.

For example one particular subject has become known as Upton Lovell Shaman.

This was a Bronze Age burial mound that was excavated in 1803 by the village of Upton Lovell near Stonehenge. The body was then excavated in 2000 to protect it from the damaged ancient monument. The figure was found with metal-working tools, stone axes and an elaborate ceremonial cloak, with animal bones around the neck and hem of the item.

Metalworking was a very rare, technical and highly revered skill in the Bronze Age.

Due to the metalworking clearly high status nature of the individual, it was assumed initially that they must be a man. A depiction in the local museum for years was of a bearded man.

DNA analysis however has unearthed that the individual was, in fact, a woman. This upended how we have traditionally viewed Bronze Age societies and women’s potential roles within them.

I was lucky enough to have a chat to Dr Thomas Booth the senior researcher who has been working on this.

He said ‘each skeleton that we sample there is the chance that we will find something unexpected and extraordinary. With the Upton Lovell burial, it was already known this was one of the most consequential people buried in the Bronze Age. Our analysis finding that this burial was female, it completely revolutionised our understanding of this burial and Bronze Age society.’

‘It is thrilling to be able to have such a big spotlight on our lab, because you can see all the ways in which the study of DNA from ancient remains is telling us all these different things about what it is to be human’.