Researchers – Portabolomics

Dr Nadia Rostami

Sara Friedl — Wed, 28 Jul 2021 08:51:38 +0000

Dr Nadia Rostami received her PhD from Newcastle University, investigating the mechanism of chromosome segregation in the model organism Bacillus subtilis. From 2015 to June 2021, Nadia worked as a postdoctoral research associate in laboratory of Dr Jakubovics, in the School of Dental Sciences at Newcastle University. During this period Nadia investigated the role of extracellular DNA and DNase enzymes produced by oral bacteria on the structure and composition of oral biofilm.

In July 2021, Nadia joined Prof Krasnogor’s laboratory as a part of Portabolomics team, focusing on advancement of version control systems for bioengineered cells.

Leanne Hobbs

Sara Friedl — Mon, 25 Feb 2019 11:58:28 +0000

Leanne Hobbs graduated from Newcastle University with a degree in Computer Science in 2014. Leanne has spent 2 years as a junior developer at Sage, followed by 2.5 years as a web developer for an electrical wholesaler.

Leanne joined the Portabolomics team in January 2019 as a senior software engineer/full-stack Ruby on Rails developer. She is working on Strand 2.3 – Toolkit for multi-comics networks, creating the web application for the Bac2Code project.

Dr Aurelie Guyet

Sara Friedl — Mon, 23 Jan 2017 09:55:03 +0000

Aurelie works on the construction of stable broad host range vectors and the application of anucleate cells in the expression of synthetic genetic circuits without host interference.

Aurelie obtained a PhD in molecular microbiology for her research at Pasteur Institute and University Paris VII (Paris, France) studying the role of the transcriptional regulator AdpA and proteolytic complex ClpP1 in the differentiation of Streptomyces lividans (2009). After this she moved to the Centre for Bacterial Cell Biology (CBCB), Newcastle University as a Research Associate funded by the BBSRC to investigate cell envelope biosynthesis in Bacillus subtilis with Dr. R. A. Daniel and Prof. J. Errington (2009 to 2015). Before starting to work on the Portabolomics project, Aurelie has been working on a Synthetic Biology project for Dr M. Dade-Robertson and Prof. A. Wipat (CBCB, School of Architecture, ICOS, Newcastle University) to identify and characterized genes that respond to hydrostatic pressure stress in Escherichia coli (2015-2017).

Dr Wendy Smith

rsdeveloper — Fri, 28 Oct 2016 09:35:21 +0000

Wendy is a member of the Interdisciplinary Computing and Complex Biosystems group and a senior research associate based in the Synthetic Biology wet lab in the Centre for Bacterial Cell Biology (CBCB), Newcastle University.

Wendy studied Medical Microbiology at Newcastle University and her PhD thesis was entitled ‘A functional genomic analysis of group A streptococcal virulence factors’. Her initial research involved investigating the mechanisms of pathogenicity utilized by the Gram-positive bacteria Streptococcus pyogenes, with specific emphasis on the structure, assembly and role of pili and sortases.

Wendy first encountered the concept of ‘Synthetic Biology’ at local seminars and recognised that this was a new and ‘exciting’ area which she wanted to be involved in. Wendy has now been working on projects in this field since June 2010. Her current work involves developing systems for monitoring and measuring the metabolic load imposed on Bacillus subtilis and Escherichia coli chassis when synthetic parts/systems are integrated into them. Recently, she has also worked on synthetic quorum peptide mediated communication systems in B. subtilis.