Profile

I live in a different city to where I work which means I have to get the train for my commute. It gives me time to relax and either watch netflix or read a book. In my spare time, I like to practise my cello and other musical instruments (I can play the flute, saxophone, ukulele, guitar and piano). I’ve just bought a greenhouse, so i’m looking forward to growing fruits and vegetables for the summer. My pronouns are she/her.

I research a particular family of enzymes that act on sugars. They cleave long chains of sugars, polysaccharides, into smaller sugars (mannose). Mannose is used by a parasite called Leishmania for energy. The parasite lives in sandflies which feed on animal blood. When the sandfly feeds, Leishmania can infect the animal. If we can design drugs to stop the enzymes from cleaving the mannose sugars, then the Leishmania is no longer infectious.

The workflow for my experiments starts with obtaining DNA which encodes the enzyme I want to produce. Firstly, I add DNA to E . coli cells so that they will over produce the enzyme. I break open the cells and purify the protein from all of the other proteins that the E. coli cell needs for growth and survival. I grow crystals of the protein (which are lots of protein molecules that make an ordered lattice) and have to look at them under a microscope as they are very small. They are then taken to a synchrotron in Oxford (Diamond) and they are shot with X-rays. From this we can use computational programmes to work out the structures.