Expanding the neuroactive pharmacopeia: phenotypic screens to discover neuroactive microbial natural products

Bacteria and fungi produce an astounding array of natural products which are the source of many of our medicines, including the psychedelic psilocybin which has recently shown promise in clinical trials for treating depression. But we have only scratched the surface. Our ability to discover novel neuroactive natural products is limited by methods for screening microbes in intact behaving animals. Our group has developed new technology for high-throughput behavioural screening and quantitative phenotyping that makes it possible to screen 10k samples per day and to extract a detailed fingerprint that captures their behavioural effects. These fingerprints can be used not only to detect neuroactivity, but to classify hits according to their possible mechanism of action. In this project, you will work with collaborators in synthetic biology and natural product chemistry to screen large microbial libraries to discover novel neuroactive natural products and to characterise their targets. The most promising compounds will be investigated as potential medicines through collaborations.

This position would give you access to unique screening technology and a group of friendly interdisciplinary colleagues who work together on behaviour assays, instrument development, machine learning, and synthetic biology. For more information, see the group’s website at https://tierpsy.com/. 

To apply, please visit https://lms.mrc.ac.uk/study-here/phd-studentships/lms-3-5yr-studentships/