Office: CAP 1.48
E-mail: a.round@uea.ac.uk
Telephone: +44 (0) 1603-593392

School Position: RCUK Academic Fellow in Pharmaceutical Nanosciences


 

Dr. Round joined UEA in 2007 as an RCUK Academic Fellow in Pharmaceutical Nanosciences. His previous role was as Core Project postdoc for the IRC in Nanotechnology in the Physics department at the University of Bristol, following a postdoc at City University, New York. His PhD was awarded by UEA in 1999 and was carried out at the Institute of Food Research.

Dr. Round’s work has focussed on developing methods for the study of single molecules and their interactions using Scanning Probe Microscopy techniques. This work has contributed to the understanding of the heterogeneous nature of the structures of complex biopolymers including pectic polysaccharides and mucin glycoproteins. He has also been involved in developing and applying new tools and techniques in single molecule scanning probe microscopy, such as active Q control and non-contact dynamic imaging.

Throughout his career he has instigated and engaged in collaborative projects with researchers in the UK, Europe and the US. In particular, as part of the IRC Core Project he has worked closely with collaborators from the other two partner sites in the IRC, Cambridge and UCL.

His current work is directed towards the development of an exciting new force spectroscopy-based tool, exploiting the properties of rotaxane complexes in order to form a sliding contact between molecule and transducer. For the first time, this will provide explicit information on the spatial relationships between events observed in a single molecule pulling or unzipping experiments. The technique is finding applications in the fields of epitope mapping, protein unfolding and polymer sequencing.

Selected publications 

A new view of pectin structure revealed by acid hydrolysis and atomic force microscopy
Round AN; Rigby NM; MacDougall AJ; Morris VJ
Carbohydrate Research 2010, 345, 487
DOI:10.1016/j.carres.2009.12.019

Mapping the positions of beads on a string: dethreading rotaxanes by molecular force spectroscopy
Dunlop A; Wattoom J; Hasan EA; Cosgrove T; Round AN
Nanotechnology 2008, 19, 345706
DOI: 10.1088/0957-4484/19/34/345706

Nanoscale thin film ordering produced by channel formation in the inclusion complex of alpha-cyclodextrin with a polyurethane composed of polyethylene oxide and hexamethylene
Hasan EA; Cosgrove T; Round AN
Macromolecules 2008, 41, 1393
DOI: 10.1021/ma071484n

The isolated MUC5AC gene product from human ocular mucin displays intramolecular conformational heterogeneity
Round AN; McMaster TJ; Miles MJ; Corfield AP; Berry M
Glycobiology 2007, 17, 578
DOI:10.1093/glycob/cwm027