the Team

I am a microbiologist with a passion for carbohydrates and their role in biology; I am particularly interested in finding out how microbes degrade complex carbohydrates. 

I became fascinated by carbohydrate active enzymes while pursuing my PhD in microbial physiology at the University of Groningen. There I combined biochemistry with fungal genetics to study how enzymes degraded complex sugars in cell walls of the fungus Aspergillus niger. As postdoctoral fellow at the University of Nottingham I investigated how Aspergillus and other fungi regulate their gene expression and produce enzymes to degrade complex carbohydrates in plant cell wall lignocellulose. Funded by a BBSRC Fellowship, I then moved to the University of Manchester where I investigating how A. niger, via its enzymes, affect the properties of plant material. I applied surface analysis tools to characterise changes in insoluble lignocellulose, and combined this with detailed characterisation of the responsible enzyme activities. This work aimed to understand of how the fungal enzymatic machinery deconstructs plant biomass, a prerequisite for improving exploitation of this capacity in sustainable biotechnology. 

In 2020 I moved to Edinburgh to establish the glycomycology team at SRUC. Here I had the opportunity to start working with anaerobic fungi, Neocallimastigomycota, highly effective degraders of plant cell walls in ruminant stomachs. My research aims to uncover how these fascinating fungi degrade plant cell walls, and how they work together with other microbes during this process. In 2023 I was awarded a University Research Fellowship by the Royal Society, which allows me to lead my team on an exciting scientific adventure towards functional understanding of the eukaryotes in the rumen microbiome.

I will be working at both SRUC and the Fry lab to generate an understanding of carbohydrate recognition and uptake that drive the initial colonisation of plant biomass by anaerobic fungi of the rumen. This knowledge will be exploited to create combinations of fungi and lignocellulose with increased potential in selective lignocellulose pre-treatments for bioprocessing.