Bernice Akpinar
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Prior to her PhD studies Bernice completed an MChem at the University of Sheffield, spending her final year in the Lab of Prof. Steven Armes. Here she investigated the properties of soft nanoparticles synthesised via polymerisation induced self-assembly. She then went on to use this technique during a summer research project with Prof. Vural Butun at Ozmangazi University in Turkey. During her degree, Bernice also completed a year’s industry experience developing new sore throat treatments for Strepsils.
Inspired by the Nuclear Pore Complex (NPC), the focus of Bernice’s PhD project is to build simplified biomimetic nanopores coated in disordered proteins found in the native NPC. In collaboration with Patrick Lusk and Chenxiang Lins' groups at Yale University, a highly tunable platform for this has been developed using DNA origami. This versatile technique provides a stable scaffold to which disordered proteins can be anchored and studied in nanopore confinement. Visualization of protein conformations inside these nanopores, as a function of experimental conditions will enhance understanding of transport mechanisms through the NPC.
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