Dr Andrew (Drew) Thomson he/him
Designing biomolecules
Lecturer in Chemical Biology
School of Chemistry
Research interests:
Peptide synthesis, Protein design, Protein biophysics, Machine learning
Research fields:
Chemical biology, Supramolecular chemistry, Protein design
Mission Priority Areas
Why do you want to join the DiveIn community?
It sounds like an interesting new approach to doing science.
Personal profile:
The underpinning drive of our research is to try to get clear answers out of complex biologically derived systems. This is usually only possible by dramatically simplifying things, so that is the approach that we try to take. Our research group is therefore interested in designing simplified versions of some of the complex protein molecules that mediate every process in living beings. We do this by experimental studies that are guided by computational methods, and try to incorporate information from existing natural systems to make simpler, more engineerable versions. These molecules are useful in chemical biology because the separate the essential function from much of the evolutionary context. Our research is very multidisciplinary covering computational studies, peptide synthesis, and biophysical analysis of the molecules we design and make. We’re particularly interested in collaborating with groups who have an interesting biological question that we might be able to help take a new perspective on.
As a group we try to build our projects around the new techniques and method that we might be able to learn as part of doing our research. This often leads to projects developing in unanticipated ways, and leads ultimately to better training for PhD students and a more exciting lab environment. We are a relatively new research group, having thus far graduated three PhD students, all of whom have gone on to work in academia or start-up companies at the chemistry/biology interface.
I have a fairly good appreciation of EDI issues, having previously been the Athena SWAN lead for the School of Chemistry. Our group ethos is to recognise individual strengths and challenges, and to create scientific projects that work for the individual researcher.
