- David Phillips Fellow
- Jenny completed her PhD in bioinorganic chemistry at the University of Sydney, Australia, with a brief stint at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where she developed redox active platinum-based anti-cancer agents and studied their biodistribtion/metabolism within tumour models. She then became a Marie Curie Incoming International Fellow at the University of Cambridge, working with Prof Erwin Reisner to explore how biocatalysts can be exploited to generate solar fuels. In particular, she worked on developing strategies to re-wire oxidoreductases, such as the water-oxidation enzyme photosystem II, to electrodes/semiconductors/other proteins in an emerging field known as 'semi-artificial photosynthesis'. She has since been awarded a BBSRC David Phillips Fellowship and started her independent group in 2018 at the Department of Chemistry. Here, she takes her takes on the re-wiring of photosynthesis to another level of complexity - in live cells!
- Research interests
- Semi-artificial photosynthesis, (photo)electrochemistry, bioinorganic chemistry, chemical biology, materials chemistry, 3D-printing, biofilm chemistry
- Research in our lab aims to develop tools for understanding how photosynthesis (e.g. via photosynthetic microorganisms and components) can be re-wired to generate electricity and solar chemicals. The approach is highly multi-disciplinary and involves bridging materials chemistry with chemical biology and synthetic biology. By developing tools to understand how natural photosynthetic systems can be interfaced with synthetic materials for energy and charge transfer, the productivity of enzymes and microorganisms in general may be better harnessed in the near future to do more useful chemistry.
- Applications from interested students and postdoctoral researchers to join the group are welcome.
Publications
Advancing Techniques for Investigating the Enzyme-Electrode Interface
– Accounts of Chemical Research
(2019)
52,
1439
(DOI: 10.1021/acs.accounts.9b00087)
Structure-Activity Relationships of Hierarchical Three-Dimensional Electrodes with Photosystem II for Semiartificial Photosynthesis
– Nano Letters
(2019)
19,
1844
(DOI: 10.1021/acs.nanolett.8b04935)
Modulating the Cellular Uptake of Fluorescently Tagged Substrates of Prostate-Specific Antigen before and after Enzymatic Activation.
– Bioconjugate chemistry
(2019)
30,
124
Oxygenic Photoreactivity in Photosystem II Studied by Rotating Ring Disk Electrochemistry
– J Am Chem Soc
(2018)
140,
17923
(DOI: 10.1021/jacs.8b08784)
Bias-free photoeletrochemical water splitting with photosystem II on a dye-sensitised photoanode wired to hydrogenase
– Nature Energy
(2018)
3,
944
(DOI: 10.1038/s41560-018-0232-y)
Interfacing nature's catalytic machinery with synthetic materials for semi-artificial photosynthesis
– Nature Nanotechnology
(2018)
13,
890
(DOI: 10.1038/s41565-018-0251-7)
Solar Water Splitting with a Hydrogenase Integrated in Photoelectrochemical Tandem Cells.
– Angewandte Chemie (International ed. in English)
(2018)
57,
10595
(DOI: 10.1002/anie.201805027)
Photoelectrochemistry of photosystem II in vitro vs. in vivo
– Journal of the American Chemical Society
(2018)
140,
6
(DOI: 10.1021/jacs.7b08563)
Photoelectrocatalytic H$_2$ evolution in water with molecular catalysts immobilised on p-Si $\textit{via}$ a stabilising mesoporous TiO$_2$ interlayer
– Chem Sci
(2017)
8,
5172
(DOI: 10.1039/c7sc01277b)
Competing charge transfer pathways at the photosystem II–electrode interface
– Nature Chemical Biology
(2016)
12,
1046
(DOI: 10.1038/nchembio.2192)
- 1 of 3