I’m interested in finding, characterising and utilising bacterial enzymes in the development of novel biotechnological applications. Throughout my PhD, I worked extensively on a flexible and elegant enzyme called BpsA (blue pigment synthetase A), which, as the name suggests, synthesises a blue pigment from two molecules of glutamine. We used BpsA as a reporter in a range of biosensors that have commercial applications in detecting glutamine and ATP.

My current research centres on the discovery and combinatorial biosynthesis of nucleosides - bioactive compounds with anticancer, antibacterial and antiviral activities. I’m seeking to build a synthetic biology pipeline that can rapidly produce hundreds of different nucleoside analogues with interesting bioactive properties. I am also co-leading a project that is focused on finding novel enzymes capable of degrading different plastics. To do this we use a combination of functional metagenomic screening and directed evolution, a powerful tool that enables us to apply Darwinian evolution principles at a single gene level.