3 year PhD studentship under the Supervision of Dr. Dominic J. Campopiano, EastChem School of Chemistry, University of Edinburgh. Project: “Developing a biocatalytic route for sweetener synthesis.” Background: Stevioside and rebaudioside are terpenoid natural products from the stevia plant that are non-calorific sweeteners (many times sweeter than sugar). The chemistry of the stevioside core influences the taste but this is very difficult to control by synthesis.
The goals of the project are to screen and identify enzymes that can be used in a “green” bio-catalytic process to generate high value, pure molecules for the food industry. The international academic and industrial partners in this project are Prof. Adilia Januário Charmier (Lusophone University of Humanities and Technologies, Lisbon, Portugal) and Cerebio, Bordeaux, France. There will be opportunity to spend time with both partners. Post-graduate training: We wish to recruit a highly-skilled graduate who will develop their skills in natural product chemistry, enzyme characterisation and engineering, recombinant DNA technology and structural biology. The PhD student will join the EastChem School of Chemistry@Edinburgh. This joint Edinburgh/St. Andrews collaboration contains >200 PhD students and has world-class facilities for training in bioorganic/enzymatic chemistry (x-ray crystallography, spectroscopy and newly-funded (EPSRC) NMR, mass spectrometry).
The Campopiano group currently consists of 6 PhD students and 3 PDRAs.
PhD students are main, contributing, first authors to many of the published papers from the lab e.g. Wallock-Richards et al, Chem. Commun., 2015, Beattie et al, Chem. Commun., 2013; Wadsworth et al, J. Am. Chem. Soc., 2013; Baxter et al., J. Am. Chem. Soc., 2012; Bhat et al., Nature Chemistry, 2010. Applications: The 3 year PhD is available to begin September 2015 and applicants should have a 1 st or upper 2nd class degree (Masters or BSc) in Chemistry, Biochemistry or Biotechnology. Please contact Dr. Dominic Campopiano (Dominic.Campopiano@ed.ac.uk) to discuss the project and eligibility.
Further information can be found here (http://www.campopiano.chem.ed.ac.uk/)