EASTBIO Pharmaceutical enzymes production by fungal cell factories

Fungi are one of the most important and diverse groups of organisms on the sphere. They offer essential products for agri-food and biotechnological inventions with multibillion USD market. The projected PhD work is planned to the exploit native fungal systems for pharmaceutically-important enzymes such as Tyrosinases, Carbonyl reductase and Amine transaminase for biomedical applications. These enzymes are key biosynthetic tools in the production of many important drugs, with many pharmaceutical products/drugs currently being produced via enzymatic biosynthesis. Continuous demand exists for pharma enzymes and this demand can be achieved sustainably using optimised fungal cell factories and production regimes. As pharmaceutically relevant enzymes are important in drug development, optimisation of fungal cell factories to efficiently increase productivity yields is essential. This work aims to selectively mine the potential of fungi for enzyme development/engineering and subsequently depicting these enzymes for fundamental research and biopharmaceutical applications. The proposed work will apply novel low-cost production technologies to achieve efficient production of the pharmaceutical enzymes. Our focus is to implement and adapt Non-Genetically Modified approaches in developing fungal candidates to enhance properties such as enzyme stability, substrate specificity and specific activity. Silent fungal enzyme clusters will be explored as a first step to further extend mining of the hidden pharma treasure in the target fungi. This also increases both the titre and productivity levels of enzyme systems in range of fungal cell factories. The potential of candidate fungi as cell factories for production of these unique enzyme molecules will be revealed through metabolic flux analysis and enzyme engineering to optimise conditions. The combination of these technologies with bioprocess optimisation will achieve production levels unparalleled by any documented industrial approach. This work will have both UK and International impacts. Thus, inventive, advance and naturally well-suited and very specific biopharma enzymes will be identified from respective fungal systems.
Applicants should download the required forms from http://www.eastscotbiodtp.ac.uk/how-apply-0 and send the following documents to [Email Address Removed]:
a. EASTBIO Application Form
b. EASTBIO DTP Equality Form
c. CV
d. Academic transcripts (a minimum of an upper second class or first class honours degree or equivalent is required for PhD study
e. Two references should be provided by the deadline using the EASTBIO reference form (http://www.eastscotbiodtp.ac.uk/how-apply-0). Please advise your referees to return the reference form to [Email Address Removed].
f. If you are nominated by the supervisor(s) of the EASTBIO PhD project you wish to apply for, they will provide a Supervisor Support Statement.