Recognition for Southampton researchers
Two PhD chemists from Southampton have been honoured at a Royal Society of Chemistry postgraduate symposium.
Jennifer McKelvie received second prize Outstanding Oral Presentation for her talk -Novel Antibiotics for Adenine Methyltransferase Inhibitors. Her research to identify and characterise inhibitors of the bacterial DNA N6 adenine methyltransferase Dam could potentially be developed into novel antimicrobials for the treatment of plague. She explains: “Resistance to antibiotics has been widely reported in scientific journals and in the wider media, so the identification of novel antimicrobials is a very exciting and active area of research.”
Jennifer also completed a six month research placement at Nanyang Technological University (NTU) Singapore as her master’s degree at Southampton.
Rebecca Driesener also won a second prize for her poster, Biosynthesis of [FeFe]-hydrogenase co-factor cyanide ligands. She is investigating the functional role of the maturation enzyme HydG during biosynthesis of the metal containing co-factor of [FeFe]-hydrogenases which are important in hydrogen metabolism in bacteria and other microorganisms. Her work may help produce improve fuel cells, replacing platinum.