Investigating the Assembly of Bacterial Encapsulins for the Efficient Engineering of Nanoscale Bioreactors

In this PhD project Mr Ballinger will produce a series of native and heterologous encapsulated systems using an established modular synthetic biology platform. In collaboration with the Wallace Lab, a series of industrial biocatalytic target enzymes will be chosen for encapsulation and the effect of encapsulation on stability and activity will be determined. The assembly of these encapsulated systems will then be monitored using a combination of several structural mass spectrometry approaches. Native mass spectrometry and ion mobility mass spectrometry techniques allow the observation and characterisation of intact encapsulin systems (3). By combining this technology with rapid mixing techniques, developed in the Clarke Lab (4), we will observe encapsulin stepwise assembly. These studies will outline the parameters for efficient encapsulation of proteins in these systems and providing a framework to produce designed encapsulated enzymes.