About me
Hi, I’m Ben Schwabe and I joined the University of York in October 2023, jointly supervised by Benjy Lichman, Gideon Grogan and Martin Fascione. I received a BA and MSci in Natural Sciences (Chemistry) from the University of Cambridge and undertook my Masters project in Jenny Zhang’s lab, studying reductive iron acquisition in cyanobacteria. I am super enthusiastic about interdisciplinary research and have been hugely fortunate to have previous experience in some diverse areas of research. Highlights include a stint as a research assistant at the International Cocoa Quarantine Centre in Reading; monitoring free-ranging Pied tamarins at the Durrell Zoo on Jersey; working in Berlin testing fluorinating reagents; as well as summer projects on DNA nanotechnology in both Birmingham (2021) and later Fribourg, Switzerland (2022).
My Project
I am working on uncovering the final steps of nicotine biosynthesis — largely by expressing, purifying and testing candidate enzymes in vitro. In the future, we would like to use these enzymes to build a synthetic biocatalytic system for functionalising pyridines. It is very exciting studying the complex chemistry going on in plants — especially finding out new things about such a simple and well-studied molecule like nicotine.