PhD in De Novo Protein Design for Continuous Biosensing

How can de novo proteins be designed for enabling continuous biomolecular sensing? That’s your question!

Information
Biosensing technologies are being developed for the continuous monitoring of biomolecules in areas such as patient care, advanced biomanufacturing, the monitoring of ecological systems, and fundamental biological research. The heart of the continuous sensors are binder molecules that specifically and reversibly bind to the biomolecules of interest.

In this PhD project, you will explore a novel direction: you will develop and test binder molecules for continuous sensing using de novo protein design strategies. You will develop methodologies to design, make, screen, and test de novo proteins for incorporation in a particle-based continuous sensing platform with single-molecule resolution, called Biosensing by Particle Motion. The long-term goal is to develop a fast and flexible workflow for the rational design of continuous biomolecular sensors for diverse applications.

The project is a collaboration between the Molecular Biosensing and the Protein Engineering research groups at TU/e (see www.tue.nl/mbx and https://merkxlab.nl/). Their fields of expertise on continuous biosensing and protein engineering are at the forefront of science. The PhD project benefits from ongoing collaborations with research institutes and academic hospitals.

The research groups integrate laboratory-based and computational approaches for advancing sensor technology and bioengineering. The research is done in the context of the Institute for Complex Molecular Systems (www.tue.nl/icms). The groups initiated and organize the international competition on Sensors for Health (www.sensus.org) and the international symposium on Continuous Real-time Biomolecular Sensing (https://sensus.org/symposium).