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/

NameProject title
Nick Yates

Bio-orthogonal conjugation for "wiring" redox-active proteins/enzymes to any conducting surface
Lewis White

Life in extreme environments: adaptation and evolution of African soda lake fishes
Andrew Stone

Defining the stem cell subtypes controlling bone and blood formation
James Ronald

Setting a circadian clock: Structural understanding of the ligand-activation model of the circadian evening complex components ELF4 to ELF3
Alastair Pizzey

The role of neural specific Src splice variants in neuronal specification and differentiation
Oliver Herd

The roles of bone marrow stromal-derived thrombopoietin in HSC niche self-renewal
Liam Chapman

Enhancing biofuel production through synthetic protein fusions
Paul Bond

Next generation computer software for placing atoms in electron density maps
Thomas Burns

Exploiting the value of the extremophile red alga Galdieria for Industrial Biotechnological benefits: White Rose BBSRC DTP Studentship Network in Industrial Biotechnology & Bioenergy
Robert Smith

Functional analysis of a novel peptidoglycan binding domain conserved in Gram-positive nosocomial pathogens
Kirsty Smitten

Antibacterial theranostics based on luminescent metal complexes
Lukas Jasaitis

Self-assembled magnetic nanoparticle arrays: Rod-like scaffold proteins to precisely template the spatial organization of biomineralisation proteins.
Harry Wood

The role of non active-site residues in enzyme catalysis
Adam Brooks

Mechanistic studies of bacterial chromosome segregation using single-molecule microscopy
Ainhao Dafis-Sagermendi

Electron cryo-microscopy (cryoEM) of sub-cellular assemblies
Magdelena Dabrowska

Light regulation of gene expression and inter-tissue signaling
Sarah Carroll

Shifting Shape with Cell Walls: Imaging the Dynamics of Guard Cell Movement
Sarah Flannery

Role of nanodomains in compartmentalisation of electron transport functions in plant photosynthetic membranes.
Peter Walker

Killing bacterial pathogens with blue light
Matthew Hughes

Harnessing the potential of extremophilic proteins from Galdieria through mechanistic insights into their stability and aggregation propensity
Alexander Wright

Exploiting extremophilic proteins as robust biological components for advanced biomaterials
Emily Turri

A synthetic biology approach to the production of terpenoids by pathway engineering.
Amelia Shaw

Arenavirus RNPs and Specialized Ribosomes
Oliver Prosser

Analysis and inhibition of chikungunya virus replication
Philip Kirk

Unlocking intercellular channels from cell wall biology to biophysics
Tomasz Kaminski

The rainbow cell – enabling technologies for immunofluorescence of living cells
Marcus Holt

Understanding the structure and function of ASPM, a protein essential for normal mitosis.
James Henderson

Towards a crystal structure of the Family B GPCR PTH2
Sarah Good

Understanding and Controlling Protein Aggregation and Disease: Molecular Mechanisms in vitro and in vivo
Michael Davies

Cellular interactions with amyloid fibrils: cytotoxic and protective mechanisms
Matthew Chadwick

A multi-disciplinary approach to understanding the mechanisms that limit exercise tolerance
Michaela Agapiou

Dissecting the mechanisms of translational regulation in Drosophila germ stem cells
Philip Brailey

Can soil microbial diversity mitigate water stress and maintain crop yield in agricultural systems?
Alexander Haworth

Proteolytic processing of sodium channel ß1 subunits
Emma Stewart 

Nuclear matrix support of DNA replication and transcription
Megan Sorensen

Metabolic mechanisms of (photo)synthetic symbiosis
Caroline Pearson

The biological role and structure functio analyses of 0-antigen modifying enzymes in the bacterial pathogen Salmonella
Alexandra Males

Chemical disruption of the 0-GlcNAc modification in the context of neurodengeration
Nathaniel Holman

Protein 0-glycosylation enzymes as targets for novel antimicrobials against mycobacteria
Rebecca Hall 

The microbiome of the tsetse
Tobias Cracknell

Revealing IGFN1 functional roles through in vivo CRISPR/CAS targeting and in vitro mechanical protein unfolding
Elizabeth Parker

The role of AMF in drought alleviation in crops: identifying the underpinning physiological mechanisms
Samir Morsli

Establishing a novel in vivo model of stress-induced senescence using zebrafish larvae
Julia Morris

The roles of a poorly characterized protease in rescuing the genome from protein linked DNA breaks
Thomas Puttick

Global control of enzyme activity in the food-borne human pathogen Campylobacter jejuni: Application of high-resolution mass spectrometry to reveal novel post-translational modifications
Peter Bancroft

Mycobacterium bovis aconitase-IRE interactions: integrating iron, oxidative and nitrosative stress responses
James Bradley

Discovery and analysis of effector genes in the parasitic weed S. asiatica; a multi-faceted genomics approach
Christopher Banyard

Investigation of a regulatory iron-sulfur complex in a bacterial sigma factor
Rebecca Ley

The role of phosphorylation in regulating the activity of human flap endonuclease 1
Eleanor Healicon

The Mechanics of Shape Change in Plants