EngBio ECRs Meet, Greet and Talk

Monday 11 December, 12pm - 1pm.
Postdoc Centre, 16 Mill Lane Basement.

Monthly meeting of the University of Cambridge EngBio Postdoc & Postgrad Groups. Open to postdocs, students and research staff from across the University and affiliated institutes (MRC-LMB, Babraham Institute, Wellcome Sanger Institute).

This month's talks:
"Production of nanobodies in Marchantia polymorpha*"

Anna Sze Wai TSE, PhD student, Haseloff Lab, Department of Plant Sciences

Biography: Anna is a PhD student in Haseloff Lab, Department of Plant Sciences. She obtained her BSc in Molecular Biology and Biotechnology at The University of Hong Kong. Anna did internships across plant biotechnology in Singapore, Cambridge and Western Australia, as well as remote bioinformatic work with American collaborators and synthetic biology for cancer research as member of an iGEM Team in Hong Kong. She loves making plants make cool things they don’t naturally produce, i.e. recombinant protein, foreign metabolites (even plastics, if she can).

"Curing plasmids for restoring antibiotic sensitivity in vivo"

Alma Wu, Dept. Engineering (Bakshi Lab)

Antibiotic resistance genes in Gram-negative bacteria are most commonly carried on large, conjugative plasmids. Once mobilised on these plasmids, resistance genes can be stably maintained in a population even in the absence of selection due to the presence of toxin-antitoxin (TA) systems on the plasmids. Furthermore, bacterial conjugation allows these resistance plasmids to be easily spread throughout populations and across species. Being able to eliminate target resistance plasmids from a population would restore sensitivity to a particular antibiotic in patients, regardless of the strain or species of the host cell. Here we present the design and validation of such curing plasmids, using intrinsic properties of plasmids such as their Inc type, TA systems and conjugation to target and eliminate specific resistance plasmids, while leaving the remainder of the population untouched.

Biography: Alma is currently a postdoc in synthetic biology in Somenath Bakshi’s group in the Department of Engineering, where her work focuses on the design of stable and robust genetic circuits. She completed a Bachelor of Science with First Class Honours at the University of Sydney, majoring in molecular biology and genetics, and biochemistry. Her honours year research at the Westmead Institute for Medical Research focused on toxin-antitoxin systems and their potential use in the creation of curing plasmids. She continued this work during her PhD in the same lab, also characterising the conjugation systems of resistance plasmids, graduating in 2023. She is also passionate about science communication, having previously served as a Communications Ambassador for the Australian Society for Microbiology.

Join our monthly meets to meet fellow Early Career Researchers from across the University interested in biology, engineering, design, computer science, bioethics and more. This is a great opportunity to meet ECRs from other schools and departments, share knowledge and ideas, establish connections and collaborations, and find out more about EngBio activities such as funding calls and support.

Each session will host 1-2 lightening talks from ECRs covering research, tools & technologies, and fields & applications of synthetic and engineering biology. This will be followed by informal discussion (and free food and drink!).

**Please RSVP as below.. Any problems with RSVP, please email vr314@cam.ac.uk**