Research output per year
Research output per year
Dr
West Mains Road, Kings Buildings
EH9 3JG Edinburgh
United Kingdom
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Research activity per year
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 fungal cell walls. As postdoctoral fellow at the University of Nottingham I investigated how 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 fungi, via their 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 in sustainable biotechnology. At SRUC my research focusses on plant biomass degradation by anaerobic fungi that are part of the ruminant microbiome.
PhD, University of Groningen
2008 → 2012
Award Date: 22 Sep 2014
Manchester Institute of Biotechnology, University of Manchester
Aug 2020 → Aug 2021Frontiers in fungal biology
Jun 2020 → …Carbohydrate Research
Aug 2017 → …Research output: Contribution to journal › Review article › peer-review
Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review