Making drug out of sunlight and ‘thin air’ (STEPHENSON_U26DTP)

Are you fascinated by how plants build complex, bioactive molecules? Join our team, at the University of East Anglia (UEA) and the John Innes Centre (JIC) in Norwich, to solve a long-standing biochemical puzzle; the origins of sesquiterpene coumarins, a rare and medicinally valuable class of plant natural products.

In this project, you will explore a bold new hypothesis: that these compounds are cyclised not by conventional sesquiterpene synthases, but by enzymes related to oxidosqualene cyclases from triterpene biosynthesis (a major and famous family of natural products found all over the plant kingdom).

You’ll combine organic chemistry, molecular and synthetic biology, and bioinformatics to identify and characterise these elusive enzymes, tracing their evolutionary origins and unlocking their potential for sustainable production of high-value compounds, for the treatment of diseases such as cancer.

The project will harness a cutting-edge plant-based heterologous expression platform to facilitate the enzyme engineering and compound production.

Why should you apply?

This project offers a unique opportunity to work at the interface between synthetic biology and medicinal organic chemistry. You will develop skills in a wide range of scientific methods spanning both fields, including bioinformatics, computational chemistry, microbiology workflows (cloning and mutagenesis), heterologous expression, analytical chemistry, natural product extraction, and structural elucidation by spectroscopic techniques. Your work will make a real impact in unlocking the medicinal power of this new chemical space.