Structural and kinetic studies of protelomerases for their application in synthetic biology

To determine structural and biochemical action of protelomerase enzymes. To use information gained from enzyme characterisation to generate variant protelomerases with improved functionality, both for use in Touchlight's dbDNATM platform and for wider synthetic biology applications.

To date, the nascent collaboration between Touchlight and the Birkbeck academics Dr Renos Savva, and Dr Vitor Pinheiro (VP has a joint appointment with UCL), has allowed insights from the structures of analogous proteins with crystal structures in the Protein Database, TelA (4E0J) and the more homologous TelK (2V6E), to inform the production of new constructs at Touchlight. These are now producing good quality protein suitable for biochemical or biophysical analysis and in the yield and purity required for structural biology. This material will form a solid starting point for the PhD work.