Project outline
The project under the supervision of Dr Farah Lamiable-Oulaidi, Professor Peter Tyler and Dr Wanting Jiao is designed to maximise the chance of developing a successful drug to treat Tuberculosis by using enzymatic transition-state analysis. This powerful technique effectively provides a blueprint for the design of potent enzyme inhibitors by describing enzyme transition-state features. We are using a computational approach to determine the transition-state of MetX, an enzyme involved in the targeted Mtb pathway. This project will involve the design, synthesis and testing of potential enzyme inhibitors.
The cross-disciplinary project will involve elements of synthetic organic chemistry, analytical chemistry and inhibitory activity assays. In this project, you will gain experience in the synthesis of small molecules and become proficient using the associated characterisation techniques (LC-MS, NMR etc). If interested, you could also be involved in the computational approach to inhibitor design.