PhD Projects

Our students are studying diverse areas of mechanistic biology in the following BBSRC strategic themes:

Advancing the frontiers of bioscience discovery:

1) Understanding the rules of life (formerly World Class Underpinning Bioscience)

2) Transformative technologies (formerly Exploiting New Ways of Working)

Tackling strategic challenges:

3) Bioscience for sustainable agriculture and food (formerly Agriculture and Food Security)

4) Bioscience for renewable resources and clean growth (formerly Industrial Biotechnology and Bioenergy)

These are the new BBSRC priority areas, taken from strategic document, “Forward look for UK Bioscience”, available on the BBSRC website:

https://bbsrc.ukri.org/documents/forward-look-for-uk-bioscience-pdf/

	Name	Project title
	Brian Shami-Inkindi University of Leeds 2023	Probing aurora-a binding sites to understand the molecular mechanisms that determine biological function
	Jelizaveta Pavljuk University of Leeds 2023	Barrier functions of the sugary cell coat: Understanding how extracellular signalling proteins and bacterial toxins navigate the cell surface
	Sarah Menezes University of Leeds 2023	Elucidating the role of ‘Royal family’ proteins as novel m⁶A readers in KSHV lytic replication
	Orestis Savva University of Sheffield 2023	Exploring the impacts of the stringent response on the structure and function of ribosomes in Staphylococcus aureus
	Tomasz Drobkiewicz University of Leeds 2023	Investigation of the endosomal potassium role in cell physiology and viral entry
	Zhen Liu University of Leeds 2023	Mechanistic understanding and inhibitor design strategies for non-mevalonate pathway TPP-dependent enzymes
	Alex King University of Leeds 2023	The shape of sustainable crop production - re-engineering plant architecture for sustainable food production
	Aidan Salter University of York 2023	Uncovering roles of carbohydrate-active enzymes within species of green algae
	Kate Gilroy University of Leeds 2023	The Dynamics of Liquid Organelle Remodelling in Response to Virus Infection
	Abdulkabir Adenopo University of York 2023	Understanding the mechanism of bacterial plasmid segregation at the single-molecule level
	Alessandra Sabatini University of Sheffield 2023	Synthetic biology based polymerase and promoter engineering for production of next-generation mRNA therapeutics
	Alicia Halliday University of Sheffield 2023	Investigating changes in cortical activity under the effect of classical psychedelics.
	Yanyun Zhao University of Sheffield 2023	In vivo investigation of spontaneous activity in the prehearing mammalian auditory system
	Veronica Thuburn University of Sheffield 2023	Investigating the role of BUD23 in Ribosome Specialisation in S. cerevisiae and hESCs
	Greg McNeil University of York 2023	Probing and Manipulating the Bacterial Cell Wall Using Chemically Modified Sugars
	Malika Zahedi University of Leeds 2022	Smooth muscle myosin filament assembly and disassembly in smooth muscle cells: fact or fiction?
	Gina Vong University of York 2022	The Perfect Sunrise: The effect of morning light on disease resistance in greenhouse crops
	Taya Bosson University of Leeds 2022	Perineuronal nets as a barrier to α-synuclein neuronal internalisation
	Sude Uyulgan University of Sheffield 2022	In vitro generation of limb-like cells
	Sophie Groenhof University of Sheffield 2022	A novel opportunity to combat the global Phosphorus crisis: investigating structure function relationships of an atypical phosphatase in soil bacteria
	Sophie Fountain University of Sheffield 2022	Understanding the mechanobiology of DNA-protein interactions at the single-molecule level
	Rob Hunton University of Sheffield 2022	Understanding the role of intracellular trafficking in in vivo cell polarisation during tissue patterning using state-of-the-art imaging and gene manipulation tools
	Miguel Aracena Velazquez University of York 2022	Investigating the structural and mechanistic basis for translation initiation in Enterovirus Type I IRESs
	Mawgan Trebell University of Sheffield 2022	How does S. pneumoniae acquire extracellular DNA from its natural environment to drive antibiotic resistance?
	Matthew Craske University of York 2022	Uncovering the evolutionary impact of Gene Transfer Agents (GTAs) on Rhodobacter capsulatus
	Maria Pattichis University of York 2022	Elucidating mechanisms regulating pathogen virulence and plant defence in the Botrytis cinerea-Arabidopsis thaliana interaction
	Lorraine Matandirotya University of Leeds 2022	Elucidating the role of host cell non coding RNAs in viral replication
	Katie Shaw University of Sheffield 2022	Silicon enhances stomatal function and protects crop yields
	Karla Cardenas Gomez University of York 2022	Going back in time to predict the evolution of a future plant pathogen
	Jordan Dialpuri University of York 2022	Automated model building of protein-nucleotide complexes using X-ray data and Alphafold models
	Joe Parr University of York 2022	Delineating insulin-action pathways
	Jake Kerrison University of York 2022	Engineering proteins for applications in biosensors
	Jack Connor University of Leeds 2022	Navigating Through Sequence Space to Understand Alpha-Synuclein Aggregation
	Harry Tran University of Leeds 2022	Probing a novel allosteric binding site in Mycobacterium DNA gyrase to tackle TB and antimicrobial resistance
	Gillian Caalim University of York 2022	Activation of the transcription factor HIF-1 by HMGN1 in Acute Myeloid Leukaemia
	Eve Anderson University of Sheffield 2022	Cell engineering and analytical strategies for control of recombinant biopharmaceutical aggregate levels in cell culture media
	Eshita Sengupta University of Leeds 2022	Investigating novel mechanical receptors in the sensory nervous system
	Erin Tait University of Leeds 2022	Bioinspired multivalent glycan structures to decipher pathogen immune evasion
	Emily Booth University of Sheffield 2022	Engineering a membrane-adapted viral helicase nanopore
	Ella Reid University of York 2022	Electrochemical High-Throughput Discovery of Novel Lytic Polysaccharide Monooxygenase Enzymes (i-CASE)
	Elisa Nightingale University of York 2022	Covalent inhibition of deubiquitiases of Leishmania mexicana
	Eilidh Ward University of Leeds 2022	Molecular function and evolution of long non-coding RNA derived micro-peptides in normal neuronal differentiation
	Dylan Lewis University of Sheffield 2022	Studying the transient nature of protein binding within the electron transport chain
	Daniel Narino Rojas University of York 2022	Developing phage therapy to reduce plant pathogen virulence in Ralstonia solanacearum
	Daisy Theobald University of Leeds 2022	Revealing the role of cellular non-coding RNAs in human papillomavirus (HPV) infection in oral keratinocytes
	Chloe Atkins University of Leeds 2022	Using Combinatorial Selection Methods to Identify Chemical Modifications of Protein Function
	Chandra Ramalingam University of Sheffield 2022	Community metaproteomics to establish functional responses within the oral microbiome
	Brianna Woodbury University of York 2022	Cryo-EM analysis of DNA packaging by the FtsK-HerA ATPases of dsDNA viruses
	Ashleigh Whelan University of Sheffield 2022	How do we make and process the RNA involved in DNA repair?
	Anyah Settle University of Sheffield 2022	Explore & develop bioanalytical methodologies to monitor the physical stability of co-formulated drug product