The School has a long and successful tradition of research in the development and application of biophysical methods, including Magnetic Circular Dichroism, EPR, direct voltammetric methods, NMR and protein X-ray crystallography, to solve problems of protein structure and functions.

Research is currently led by the following members of Faculty:

Prof Peter Belton

  • Use of cereal proteins to make biodegradable plastics and as drug delivery systems.
  • Applications of spectroscopy and other physical characterisation to food and drug delivery systems

Dr Tharin Blumenschein

  • Nuclear magnetic resonance of proteins
  • Protein dynamics, interactions, and function
  • Intrinsically disordered proteins

Prof Julea N. Butt

  • voltammetric and spectroelectrochemical studies of redox-active metalloproteins.
  • enzymes of anaerobic microbial respiration that participate in the nitrogen, sulphur and iron cycles.
  • developing strategies to study Q/QH2 oxidoreductases in electrode supported bilayers.

Dr Myles Cheesman

  • EPR (electron paramagnetic resonance) and MCD (magnetic circular dichroism) spectroscopy of transition-metal centres in proteins.
  • Multi-heme enzymes involved in bacterial denitrification.
  • MOTTLE (MCD monitored optically transparent thin layer electrodes)

Dr Andrew M Hemmings

  • X-ray structural and mechanistic studies of enzymes
  • Metal-protein recognition and the mechanisms of metal homeostasis in bacteria
  • Bioinformatics & protein structure prediction, particularly of cofactor-rich proteins

Dr Nick E Le Brun

  • metal ion trafficking and storage in bacterial cells
  • Iron-sulfur- and heme-binding transcriptional regulators
  • thioredoxin-like proteins involved in disulfide bond management

Dr Fraser MacMillan

  • Application and development of EPR (ESR) including multi-frequency, pulsed and double resonance techniques
  • Structure/function/dynamics relationships in biomacromolecules, especially in membrane and metallo-proteins
  • Protein - ligand interactions, electron transfer and biological transport processes
  • Spin Labelling, EPR and distance measurements

Prof Geoffrey R Moore

  • Natively unfolded proteins
  • Intermolecular interactions involving proteins
  • Biomolecular NMR spectroscopy

Dr Vasily Oganesyan

  • Theoretical and Computational methods for advanced spectroscopy
  • Electronic structure calculations
  • Molecular Dynamics simulations

Prof Chris Pickett

  • Artificial Hydrogenases
  • Photoelectrocatalytic devices for hydrogen generation, carbon dioxide fixation and alkane functionalisation
  • Electropolymer materials

Prof Andrew J Thomson

  • Iron sulfur clusters as regulators of bacterial genes in response to environmental factors such as redox stress, oxygen and nitric oxide