Sustainable protein production for therapeutic and biotechnological applications

Streptomyces spp. are characterised by a complex secondary metabolism which is the basis of many agrichemicals and clinical pharmaceuticals including almost half of all antibiotics.

They also offer an alternative to E. coli and yeast to develop a new and sustainable protein and peptide production platform with industrial application, especially to produce otherwise difficult to manufacture proteins and peptides with therapeutic, agrichemical and biotechnological applications. This will be the focus of the project.

The successful candidate will have access to cutting-edge research facilities within the John Innes Centre as well as a stimulating interdisciplinary research and training environment, and they will gain an excellent foundation in biochemistry, protein production, molecular microbiology, synthetic biology, chemical biology and enzymology.

They will also work closely with the team at a leading UK biotechnology company with whom they will interact extensively. As such the project offers an opportunity to learn a plethora of techniques and research approaches, and the combination of skills and experience provided by this studentship will make the successful candidate highly employable in both academia and industry.