Larrosa

[4-year funded PhD studentship with annual UKRI minimum stipend (currently £21,805 per year) plus £1,000 per year enhancement, and a research training support grant of up to £20,000 for the full programme. Open to Home (UK) and international applicants; funding is competitive and awarded to the strongest applicants.] This PhD studentship at The University of Manchester develops new chemically engineered proximity probes for sensing dynamic molecular neighbourhoods in living cells. The project addresses a key challenge in proximity labelling: how to create a measurable signal without disturbing sensitive biological systems, while also controlling how far the labelling chemistry reaches. The successful student will design and synthesise a library of new probe molecules and systematically vary their chemical and physical properties to tune probe behaviour. The work combines synthetic chemistry with biochemical and cellular experiments to understand how molecular structure controls labelling efficiency, biological compatibility and spatial precision. Experimental studies will include biochemical assays, advanced fluorescence imaging and super-resolution microscopy in living cells. The project will then test selected probes in more challenging biological systems where conventional proximity labelling may itself perturb the processes under study. Proteomic analysis will be used selectively to identify molecular networks revealed by the new sensing platform. The advert indicates that preliminary work from the supervisory team supports the feasibility of the idea, while leaving room for fundamental discovery and technology development. The project sits at the interface of chemical probe design, chemical biology and cellular analysis in a research environment focused on developing new tools for studying signalling inside cells.