Glen Dorrington
Introduction
Greetings and welcome to my e-portfolio page. Currently I am undergoing a PHD in the Alison Rodger group post completion of the Mathematical Biology and Biophysical Chemistry Msc course within the multidisciplinary MOAC faculty. After experiencing a multidisciplnary degree I am fully aware of how most fields of research tend to overlap and to get the full picture sticking to one discipline simply isn't enough, and studying in MOAC was the next step forward. Development of the PHD proposal was directly linked to two of the short-term research projects conducted as part of the Msc.
Miniproject II: How do molecules behave in cells?
Miniproject III: Can we extract useful information from scattering artefacts in flow oriented spectroscopy experiments?
PHD Outline
Visualising biological systems at a molecular level: applications of polarized light spectroscopy to key molecules in blood.
For the most part this is an expansion of MpII. Nearing the end of the short project a spectral data library of the most common spectroscopically active small molecules (aromatic amino acids, nucleobases) had been built up and investigation of the simplest cellular system had begun, the red blood cell. Preliminary results were encouraging and from here the PHD has continued onwards. Application of MpIII has also proven useful for removal of scattering from spectra with the use of a scattering calculation GUI produced in Matlab. The essential goal of the PHD is to be capable of examining cellular systems via optical techniques such as LD, CD and Absorption spectroscopy in order to complement microscopic techniques, in which it is considerably harder or impossible to determine sample characterics at a molecular level.
Current Short Term Goals
- Reduce variability and so increase the reliabiliy of blood cell spectra.
- Determine flow dynamics, aggregation and organisation of molecules within the cells.
- Examine temperature, pH, time-dependance and buffer dependance on spectral quality.
- Investigate the impact of varying lens focal length and concentrated collimated beams.
Education
2008-2012 : Chemical Biology Msc
2012-2013: Mathematical Biology and Biophysical Chemistry.
2013-2016 : MOAC PHD
