Profile

My work is focused on a surface protein that is important in bubonic plague infection. Bubonic plague killed a third of the population in medeval times and still kills over 1000 people per year. The F1 protein coats the plague cell and prevents the immune system from killing the bacterium. i am looking at how the protein is assembled. It is possible that the F1 protein can be used as a vaccine against plague.

In science there is no typical day! I usually spend all day in the lab. Often I grow up cells overnight and then in the morning I can use them for experiments. Sometimes I split the cell up so I can seperate the cell membrane and the cytoplasm and look at each bit seperately. I also use antibodies which light up so I can see what is on the cell surface under a microscope. Other things include copying DNA, making mutant cells to analyse and looking at the proteins in the cell by seperating them according to size.