Dr Jose Munoz-Munoz
Dr. Munoz-Munoz is a Lecturer in the Department of BioSciences at Durham University (UK) with more than 25 years' experience investigating bacterial enzymology and microbe-microbe interactions in gut microbiota environments and agricultural ecosystems.
He has a strong background in enzyme characterization of plant-glycan degrading bacteria; microbial systematic; structural biology; functional and comparative genomics ((meta)genome analysis and (meta)transcriptomics). His research interests and trajectory are focused on agroindustrial plant glycan metabolism by human gut microbiota, microbe-microbe interactions, discovery of new prebiotics, characterization of biotechnological enzymes and management of agro-industrial waste materials and employment of aerobic and anaerobic bacteria for the bioenergy conversion.
His international career has fostered the authorship of scientific publications on the enzymes degrading food waste polysaccharides and the protein engineering of those enzymes to enhance the activity/affinity through structure-guided directed evolution.
Ellie Ashcroft
Ellie is interested in discovering novel enzymes functioning under dry conditions.
She is a PhD student specialising in protein biochemistry and synthetic biology. Ellie’s research involves studying novel enzyme function under dry conditions. His work aims to understand how enzymes can fold and perform catalysis under low moisture. Her BSc in biochemistry involved research into the atmospheric microbiome and identified optimal methods of obtaining and culturing airborne bacteria.
2022-2026.
Alice Stephen
Alice is doing a PhD project based on the identification and mechanistic understanding of enzymes optimised for high pH detergent environments.
Alice PhD is going to understand how microbes, and their respective CAZYmes, are adapted to perform catalysis under extreme pH conditions. In particular, she is interested to use molecular biology, structural biology, microbiology and protein engineering as technqiues to dissect how microbes from soda lakes are adapted to pHs higher than 10.
Before joining the lab, she did the MBiol at Newcastle University in Cell/Cellular and Molecular Biology.
2023-2027.
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Molly Hall
Molly started her project titled: AmadoriZyme: Enzymatic targeting of Amadori compounds in laundry and dish soils. She is going to develop novel strategies to tackle amadori products using bacterial and fungal flavo-enzymes.
Amadori products are stable intermediates formed from reducing sugars and amino groups during glycation and the Maillard reaction. They are an early marker of hyperglycemia in diabetes and can contribute to diabetic complications.
During her PhD, Molly will try to discover novel Amadoriases that are able to degrade amadori products using Molecular Biology, Protein Engineering and Structural Biology but also proteomics and microbiology to understand how new microbes can metabolize these products as carbon source.
Before joining the lab, Molly did her MBiol in Biotechnology and Microbiology at University of York.
2024-2028.
Rosanna Rostron
Rosanna started recently her PhD project titled: Enzymatic surface Engineering with Glycoside Hydrolases. Rossana is going to use multi-domain enzymes with the aim to modify the surface of fabrics and enzymatically functionalyze it for biological applications. She will target cellulose but also other biopolymers.
2025-2029.
