SuCCEED (Sustainable commodity chemicals through enzyme engineering and design) is a prosperity partnership between the University of Manchester and Shell. The project seeks to develop industrially feasible routes from biological feedstocks to valuable commodity chemicals. As a PhD student on the BBSRC Doctoral Training Partnership, my contributions will focus on optimisation of these routes through metabolic engineering under the supervision of Prof. David Leys.

During this important role, I have learned a great deal about the way in which the voice of students can be made heard where it matters, how the school responds to this information, and recognising effective ways to collect feedback and relay new information to the cohort.

Using X-ray crystallography and other in vitro methods to investigate two putative homologous transcription factors from the predatory bacterium Bdellovibrio bacteriovorus under the supervision of Prof A. Lovering.

I was awarded competitive funding by the Biochemical Society for a practical six-week studentship to be completed in the summer while producing a short report about the lab work. During this I gained confidence in many practical lab skills while developing transferrable skills in a somewhat new environment including organisation, prioritisation, communication and fast learning. The report covers work I conducted on developing novel proteoliposome-based assays designed by Dr Tim Knowles’ lab in order to monitor the transport of phospholipids between lipid bilayers via a potential phospholipid-transporting complex of proteins.