This fully-funded 4 year PhD studentship is a unique opportunity to be part of an interdisciplinary cohort of PhD students tackling one of the most serious issues facing the world today.
A significant proportion of human infections are caused by microbial pathogens. These organisms interact socially to build highly organized, well-coordinated, hierarchical structures known as biofilms.
There is growing interest in the use of photosynthetic proteins in devices for solar energy conversion, biosensing, photosensing, photocatalysis, touch sensing, molecular electronics and biodegradable solar cells.
Every human life starts when an egg is fertilised by a sperm. Fertilisable eggs are produced from oocytes by a specialised form of cell division called meiosis (1).
Within eukaryotes, DNA is packaged into chromatin. The basic unit of chromatin is the nucleosome, formed by the wrapping of ~147 bp of DNA around an octamer of histones proteins.
Transcription-coupled DNA repair (TCR) pathways prioritise the repair of certain lesions in "active" genes. These pathways help maintain genome integrity throughout the lifetime of multi-cellular organisms, and thus help prevent the occurrence of mutation that might cause cancer or other disorders.
The segregation of bacterial chromosomes is orchestrated by the co-ordinated actions of ParB and condensin [1]. ParB (also called Spo0J) is a site-specific DNA binding protein that binds at and around parS sequences near the origin of replication to form “ParB networks” which define the bacterial centromere [2].
Through the study of protein structure, primarily using protein crystallography but also electron microscopy and small-angle X-ray scattering, we aim to probe crucial biomolecular interactions central to a variety of diseases.
