PhD Studentship - Molecular Resolution of Biomolecular Assembly by Combining Neutron Scattering and Course-grained Simulation

Number of positions available: 1

Eligibility: UK Only

Funding: School of Physics & Astronomy Studentship in partnership with STFC ISIS, offering the award of fees, together with a tax-free maintenance grant of £19,237 per year for 3.5 years

Lead Supervisor’s full name & email address

Professor Lorna Dougan: l.dougan@leeds.ac.uk

Project summary

This PhD project opportunity is part of an exciting new collaboration between the ISIS neutron and muon facility in Oxfordshire and the University of Leeds to develop new tools for understanding the multiscale structure and hydration of biomolecules. The successful student will join a cohort of ISIS Facility Studentships and benefit from a rich programme of support both at the ISIS Facility and Leeds.

Background:

Nanoscale biological building blocks play a vital role in biological systems and can be assembled to create novel biomaterials for use in healthcare applications such as drug delivery and tissue engineering. To date, we have employed neutron diffraction and simulation based structural refinement to study the atomistic structure of small building blocks such as aqueous sugars and amino acids, providing rich information on biomolecule hydration and biomolecule interactions. A step change is urgently needed in our approach, to move to more realistic, larger molecules and higher concentrations. This progress will allow us to understand how hydration of a biomolecule can be used to control its self-assembly, or to undertake a multiscale investigation of the hydration and self-assembly for biomaterials. To achieve this, integration of coarse-grained molecular simulation into a structural refinement data analysis workflow is needed. This advancement will have a major impact for Biosciences and biomaterials for Healthcare applications.

Objectives: 

In this PhD project you will develop methods that can access structural information across the length scales relevant for both hydration and macromolecular assembly. 

• You will employ an integrated approach, combining biophysical characterisation techniques at Leeds, neutron total and small angle scattering techniques and appropriate modelling techniques and the Multi-Scale Simulation Scattering Intensity Calculator (MuSSIC) software at the ISIS Facility. 
• Initially you will use standard atomistic techniques to further develop our understanding of structure and hydration of a small model peptide. 
• You will then be supported in taking a role in the MuSSIC software team, pushing the development of the code to gain a new understanding of structure and hydration across a wide-length scale range for biomolecular systems.

Please state your entry requirements plus any necessary or desired background

A first class or an upper second class British Bachelors Honours degree (or equivalent) in an appropriate discipline.

Subject Area: Modelling, biological physics, molecular, neutron scattering, resolution, self-assembly, soft matter.

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