Professor Emma Raven

Professor of Biological Chemistry

B.Sc. (Leicester), Ph.D. (Newcastle Upon Tyne).

Tel: 0116 229 7047

Research Interests
Recent Publications
Prizes and Awards: RSC prize; RSC Industrial Award.

FULLY FUNDED PhD POSITION AVAILABLE FOR OCTOBER 2013

The Departments of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of Leicester, UK, and the Institut Laue-Langevin (ILL, Grenoble, France), jointly invite applications for a three-year PhD programme focusing on redox-linked domain movements in the catalytic cycle of cytochrome P450 reductase.

Electron transfer is of fundamental importance in biology and the way in which it is controlled is an area of considerable international activity. The importance of large-scale protein dynamics in regulating biological electron transfer is beginning to be recognised but the detailed structural description of these dynamic processes remains a challenge. This project will address this challenge in cytochrome P450 reductase, an enzyme which plays a key role in drug metabolism in man, by relating structurally-defined domain motion to individual steps in the catalytic cycle of the enzyme.

The PhD project will be located jointly in Grenoble (France), at the ILL, and at the University of Leicester. The range of skills learned will span from small angle neutron scattering and neutron reflectometry (physical chemistry; ILL) through protein purification and molecular biology (ILL and Leicester) to optical and EPR spectroscopy (Leicester) and kinetic analyses (Leicester). At Leicester, the successful student will join a thriving multidisciplinary environment based in the new Henry Wellcome Building for Biomedical Science and the Department of Chemistry, and will be exposed to a range of methodologies at the chemistry/biology interface. The Henry Wellcome building is equipped with state-of-the-art equipment and laboratories, including instrumentation for protein expression and purification, protein crystallography, biological spectroscopy and mechanistic work.

The successful candidate will be employed with a gross salary which is higher than a normal UK Research Council stipend, and there are other financial benefits from ILL (for more details see: http://www.ill.eu/science-technology/phd-students/phd-recruitment/phd-work-at-the-ill/). The project will be jointly supervised at Leicester by Professors Emma Raven, Gordon Roberts and Peter Moody, and Drs. Anne Martel & Giovanna Fragnato at Grenoble will supervise the neutron work.

Applicants should have or expect to obtain a first class or upper second class degree in Biochemistry, Chemistry or a related discipline such as Physics.

Contact information: Professor Emma Raven (emma.raven@le.ac.uk), Professor Gordon Roberts (gcr@le.ac.uk), or Dr. Anne Martel (martela@ill.fr).