Identification of antibiotic resistance causing enzymes through nanobiotechnology (physics/biosciences)

Bacterial resistance to antibiotics is one of the most significant crises in modern healthcare. The most widely utilised class of antibiotics (and therapeutics in general) are the ?-lactams, which include ampicillin, amoxicillin and methicillin. By far the main mechanism bacteria use to confer ?-lactam resistance is the production of ?- lactamases (BLs) that hydrolyses the pseudo-peptide bond in the ?-lactam ring which is critical for it is antibacterial activity.

A gap in modern antimicrobial treatment is a companion diagnostic for improving antibiotic use, based on detecting the presence of key AMR markers. Your studentship will take a vital step towards filling this gap by linking environmentally sensitive electronic materials to the unique molecular signatures of AMR proteins. To achieve this you will engineer a protein called BLIP that binds to a wide variety of BLs so that it can interface precisely with the base sensing material, carbon nanotubes (CNTs). CNTs are incredibly useful sensing materials as their electrical conductance highly sensitive and changes in response to local changes in environment such as protein-protein interactions. To generate the precise interface between BLIP and CNTs, you will use an exciting new synthetic biology approach.

By reprogramming the genetic code, you will introduce new chemistry types not present in nature into BLIP that will facilitate the interface with CNTs. You will thus be involved in developing a new approach to biomolecular sensing with resolution down to the single/few molecule level. You will learn a variety of techniques that span different disciplines, ranging from protein engineering, reprogrammed genetic code approaches, material interfacing, single molecule imaging using scanning probe microscopy, amongst others.