Bioinformatics
Division of Cellular and Molecular Biology
School of Animal and Microbial Sciences
University of Reading
Telephone: 0118 987 5123 ext 7074

I obtained my B.Sc (Hons) in Biochemistry at the University of Surrey in 1999; having researched, in my undergraduate dissertation, the role of cyclic nucleotides in vasodilation, induced by adenosine analogues. I subsequently began research at the University of Reading as a PhD student investigating pairing preferences of amino acid residues within beta sheets, with a view to predicting, and thereafter modelling, novel beta structures, using the rules derived. Central to my research is to utilize information derived from known protein structures in order to predict the structures of other proteins, directly from the corresponding amino acid sequence. Comprehension of the sequence-structure relationship allows a set of rules to be derived from which it is possible to design novel protein molecules and model by homology. It has been established that in anti-parallel beta sheets in proteins, only a small proportion of interstrand amino acid pairs have shown clear preferences for specific interstrand positions (Hutchinson et al., 1998). The project thus far has analysed all combinations of anti-parallel residue pair as well as encompassing all combinations of parallel residue pairs.

More detailed information is available: Current work

Our recent lab outing to Chessington!!!

I am a member of the Reading University Bioinformatics Consortium (RuBiC)