Katie Jameson

Katie Jameson studied at the University of York and graduated with a MChem. Studying biochemistry modules whenever she could, including during her final year project, where Katie cloned, expressed, and purified bacterial proteins for characterisation.

Having really enjoyed her last year of research for her first degree, Katie decided to stay on at the University and carry out research for a PhD. Interested in structure determination, Katie solved 2 protein structures relevant to understanding bacterial DNA replication regulation. During that time, Katie has spoken about X-ray crystallography and its use in medical research including protein-drug interactions at the York Festival of Ideas. York Festival of Ideas was launched in June 2011 as a partnership between the University of York, York Theatre Royal, York Museums Trust, the National Centre for Early Music, and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. Its objective is to enhance York’s reputation as a city of ideas and innovation through offering the highest calibre of public events to local, regional and visitor audiences.

Katie joined the Institute of Integrative Biology at the University of Liverpool, as a Postdoctoral Research Associate as part of a multidisciplinary team carrying out research into humane rodent control. Rodents consume or contaminate >7% of the world’s food supply. The team was trying to identify a way of improving rodent control methods and make them more humane. e.g. by attracting the rodents away from food. Katie cloned, expressed, and purified many proteins including pheromone-binding proteins, both wildtype and engineered mutants, for structure determination, ligand binding studies and for the team to use in mouse behavioural bioassays. During this time, Katie solved 4 protein-ligand structures using X-ray crystallography.

Leaving Liverpool and briefly working as a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the University of Leeds, Katie finally returned to the University of York working as a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the Department of Biology. Katie has a great fascination with the structural determination of proteins and was particularly interested in learning cryo-EM at the University of York. There she obtained some preliminary results but is still very interested in working on cryo-EM projects in the future.

Katie spends her spare time doing cross stitch often producing cross stitch squares for a national charity called Love Quilts UK. They are a world-wide group of volunteer stitchers and quilters who cross stitch squares for children under the age of 19 years, who have life threatening or life-long illnesses. The squares are very personal to the child and are made into beautiful quilts.

She also loves to walk (but doesn’t do anything as exhausting as some members of the Peak Proteins Team! )