Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and the associated spectroscopic techniques are at the heart of structure-function relationships for materials science, but the spectroscopic chemical characterisation is not pushed to its full potential in soft biological materials and pharmaceuticals. It is possible to characterise the distribution of pharmaceutical molecules with respect to their targets using spectroscopic techniques at the high spatial resolution accessible by electron microscopy. Antibiotic resistance has increasingly become a challenge for the world healthcare system making it essential to better understand the interaction of antibiotics and their target receptors. This work will develop a chemically sensitive technique to characterise pharmaceuticals and other soft materials in their target environments using developments that have been proven effective in materials science.
This work will be in collaboration with the Rosalind Franklin Institute enabling access to a novel chromatic aberration corrected electron microscope and the latest generation of microfluidic TEM holders for studies of dynamic interactions. This project work will be of impact to the pharmaceutical and structural biology communities, but the technique development nature makes the work best suited to a candidate with a strong mathematical, computational or physical sciences background.
