PhD Studentship: Designing synthetic proteins for sustainable control of fungal plant diseases

Overview

This PhD studentship focuses on designing synthetic proteins for the sustainable control of fungal plant diseases. Fungal pathogens secrete effector proteins that disable host defences, but these same effectors can potentially activate host immunity. The project applies advances in artificial intelligence-based protein biology to create synthetic proteins that either bind directly to fungal effectors to stop their function or incorporate into immune receptors to give host plants new recognition abilities. The research targets immune-suppressing effectors recently identified from the wheat pathogen Zymoseptoria tritici.

What you get

The selected student learns computational protein design pipelines including RFdiffusion and BindCraft, and produces both effectors and synthetic proteins in bacterial, yeast, and insect heterologous expression systems. Pairwise interactions are tested in vitro using isothermal titration calorimetry or microscale thermophoresis through a collaboration with the laboratory of Professor Andy Lovering, while protein interactions in plants are evaluated using Agrobacterium-mediated transient expression in Nicotiana benthamiana. This project serves as a proof-of-concept for whether AI-designed synthetic proteins can interact with pathogen effectors to suppress activity or build new immune receptors that bolster plant defence.

Key dates

The closing date for applications is 23 November 2026.