PhD Projects
We welcome applications from potential PhD students. Most PhDs in the UK commence on the 1st of October. All applicants should start out by looking at the application information, which is located on the Department of Biochemistry homepage. There is more information there about fees and funding and the application procedure.
UK/EU Students
For home students, their are a number of research council funded studentships available. The deadline for applications for these studentships is usually January/February and formal interviews are held during February. If you are eligible for one of these studentships, get in touch with us by email well before the deadline and come for a visit to discuss projects.
Overseas Students
For overseas applicants the deadline for competitive scholarships administered through the University of Cambridge is December the year before the starting date. See the Board of Graduate Studies website. which includes a section on fees and funding. for information about the different scholarships available and the application procedures.
Current projects
The main focus of our lab lies in studying interactions between small G proteins and their downstream effectors and in studying the effectors themselves, using structural as well as functional analyses. We have many different projects underway in this general area, for example:
Ras family: Ral and its effector RLIP76/RalBP1.
We have recently published the structure of the Ral binding domain of RLIP76 and the complex that it forms with RalB. We have also published the structure and dynamics of RalB itself. We are continuing to investigate the structure and interactions of RLIP76 to try to understand the mechanism of action of this important protein.
Rho family: Rac1, RhoA, Cdc42 and the effectors ACK1, IQGAP and PRK1.
We have a long-standing interest in the Rho family and have published several papers on the complexes formed between Cdc42 and the kinases ACK1 (a tyrosine kinase) and PAK (a serine/threonine kinase). More recently we have also begun to investigate the interactions of ACK1 with other molecules. We have worked on IQGAP, an effector of Rac1 and Cdc42 that contains a RasGAP-like domain which has no GAP activity in collaboration with David Sacks (NIH). Finally, we solved the structure of the HR1b domain from the serine/threonine kinase PRK1 in complex with Rac1 and found that the interaction required the C-terminal polybasic region of Rac1, which has never been found in a small G protein interaction before. Our interest in coiled-coil effectors of the HR1 domain type continues and we are studying a number of HR1 domains and theoir interactions with the Rho family.
Arf family: Arl2 and Arl3 and their effector BART.
We solved the structure of the protein BART, one of the first effectors that was found for the Arf-like proteins Arl2 and Arl3. The BART protein has a completely novel fold and does not resemble any other small G protein effectors. The structure of the BART/Arl2 complex shows that the N-terminal extension of Arl2 is involved in the BART interaction. This is unusual for an Arf/effector interaction and raises several interesting questions. We remain interested in addressing the consequences of the BART interaction with Arl2 and the function of BART.
Techniques in use in the laboratory
Some of the techniques that we use are: NMR, scintillation proximity assays, isothermal calorimetry, fluorescence (stopped flow and steady state), tissue culture, circular dichroism, analytical ultracentrifugation, site-directed mutagenesis, protein expression (bacterial and baculovirus), Western blot, co-immunoprecipitation, X-ray crystallography.
If you are most interested in structural biology and would like to solve a structure during your PhD, apply to Helen Mott. If you are more interested in biochemical analyses or in doing cell biology, apply to Darerca Owen. All students are supervised by both of us in practice but by one of us officially.