Opportunities to join the lab.
Funded by the Wellcome Trust
Our lab, in collaboration with JP's lab and Kaustuv Sanyal's lab (Bengalaru), was recently awarded an 8 year Wellcome Trust Discovery Award to study mechanisms of cell division and aneuploidy in Cryptococcus. Several positions are currently available. Please contact us by email if interested.
PhD studentships
Structure-driven dissection of kinetochore-microtubule attachments and their regulation in the fungal pathogen Cryptococcus neoformans
Cryptococcus neoformans is an understudied fungal pathogen with an unusual life cycle, forming polyploid titan cells during infection in a bid to evade the immune system. It kills hundreds of thousands of immune-compromised AIDS patients each year, mainly in Africa. You will express, purify and solve the structures of sub-complexes within the kinetochore, or associated regulators such as MCC, APC/C, CPC and the proteasome. Cryo-EM structures will be used to screen for and identify small molecule inhibitors. CRISPR-mediated genome engineering will be employed to determine the consequences of specific point mutations to generate separation-of-function alleles and identify future drug targets. How do these impact viability, polyploidy, titan cell formation and infectivity? Small molecule inhibitors will be screened for that produce similar loss of function phenotypes. Longer term these inhibitors should prove useful in combination therapy treatments, alongside anti-microtubule drugs.
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