Are you a motivated postdoc looking for a challenging interdisciplinary project?
Sustainable nucleic acids synthesis is a major thrust area within the UK and around the world. The Mukherjee group is focused on developing enzymatic alternatives to address the manufacturing challenges faced in producing oligonucleotides and their bioconjugates. You will work on building a biocatalytic cascade for peptide-oligonucleotide conjugate (POC) synthesis. You will (i) design and generate a library of designer nucleic-acid modifying enzymes for the cascade (building on initial discoveries in our group), (ii) apply one or more biophysical methods, such as microscale thermophoresis, ITC, fluorescence polarisation, single-molecule FRET, to characterise assembly dynamics and (iii) combine high-throughput biochemical assays with MS approaches to assess synthesised POCs and optimise cascade efficacy. You will also have the opportunity to gain supervisory skills by supporting Masters and PhD students, where necessary within the group.Â
In certain bacteriophages (phi29, PRD1) replication initiation employs a protein primer in place of an RNA primer. The Mukherjee group is focused on exploiting such novel mechanisms of polymerase action for downstream application in biocatalytic processes. You will work on the structural characterisation of a bacteriophage protein-primed replication complex. Building on existing knowledge in the group you will: (i) purify and assemble a macromolecular complex and (ii) optimise conditions to obtain a cryo-EM structure of replication initiation complexes in various states during protein-priming. You will also have the opportunity to gain supervisory skills by supporting Masters and PhD students, where necessary within the group.Â