About the project
Food security demands better agricultural inventions to ensure reliable access to sufficient, safe, and nutritious food for an active and healthy life. This PhD project develops ways to explore dynamic structural biology of membrane proteins important for insect and weed control, to inform on drug action and shorten drug-discovery timelines.
This PhD project offers a unique opportunity to work across academic and industrial environments, combining cutting-edge structural biology with real-world agrochemical applications.
Jointly supervised by researchers at the University of Southampton and Syngenta, this project aims to achieve distinct insights into how drugs and natural ligands perturb the dynamic signalling landscape of two targets - vesicular acetylcholine transporter (VAChT) and homogentisate solanesyltransferase (HST) – which offer individual systems of study for insect and weed control function.
Membrane proteins play vital roles in cellular signalling and represent over half of all drug targets, yet their mechanisms of action remain poorly understood.
This project will employ Hydrogen/Deuterium Exchange Mass Spectrometry (HDX-MS) to investigate protein backbone dynamics and how these are influenced by drugs, natural ligands, and lipids.
The student will learn to integrate HDX-MS data with functional assays, mutagenesis investigations and molecular simulations to achieve atomistic insights into protein function.
This project is ideal for a creative and collaborative researcher who enjoys working across disciplines.
The student will join the Reading Lab at Southampton’s School of Biological Sciences and benefit from expert supervision and access to state-of-the-art facilities in both academic and industrial settings. Functional assays will be conducted in collaboration with Syngenta scientists, ensuring translational relevance to food security, and the studentship includes placements at Syngenta’s Jealott’s Hill Research Centre and participation in their annual research collaborations conference.
Supervisors
As well as Eamonn Reading from the University of Southampton, you will also receive supervision from Ying-Ju Chen, John Mina, Joe Gingell, and Christian Noble from Syngenta, UK.
