About the project
This project will pioneer a novel chemical strategy to control the formation and maturation of biofilm in the oral microbiome using small molecules.
Oral biofilm is implicated not only in caries but also in wider oral health and pathology. The formation and maturation of oral biofilm are considered to be affected by some key enzymes. We will attempt to control these enzymes using small molecules.
This highly multidisciplinary project combines a wide variety of expertise including carbohydrate chemistry, enzymology, molecular biology, and microbiology to provide chemical tools to crack the code of oral biofilm’s impact on the oral health.
You will design, synthesise and test small molecules that can control the activity of key enzymes of oral biofilms. You will also express target enzymes to test synthesised small molecules and work on oral bacteria and the oral microbiome model for validation of our strategy.
This interdisciplinary project will be performed in School of Chemistry in the first place, and as the project develops, you will need to spend some time in the School of Biological Sciences and the National Biofilms Innovation Centre (NBIC). Furthermore, this project will be conducted alongside a related research project of the NBIC and we expect a strong synergy between the two projects.
