PhD Candidate, Synthetic Biology CDT

I am studying at the Gifford Lab in Warwick, in collaboration with the research groups of Dr Whitney and Dr Galan in Bristol, as part of the Synthetic Biology CDT.

My current project, "carbon nanodots as a tool for root-microbe interactions", is taking a synthetic biology approach into the data-driven sector of plant molecular biology. It is our aim to create a platform technology, which can be used to deliver a variety of synthetic effectors to whole plants, making subsequent use of fluorescent sorting methods to examine the effects on a single-cell scale: without using transgenic methods. My objective is to provide proof-of-concept for this technology, which will be highly useful in our group's progress in engineering nitrogen-fixing nodulation into non-legume plants.