Sam Bloor PhD

Sam studied at the University of Liverpool and graduated with an MBiolSci (Biochemistry) (2014 – 2018). During his final year project, Sam got a first glimpse at protein expression and purification, when he used structural NMR to study the protein-protein interactions of end binding protein-1 (EB-1).

Sam was fortunate enough to undertake a six-week internship at Alder Hey Children’s Hospital, as part of his masters performing bioinformatic analyses as part of the 100,000 Genomes project, identifying a unique truncation mutation in the b3gat3 gene which contributed to short stature in a young patient.

Having been exposed to the wonders of structural biology during his final year project at Liverpool, Sam undertook his PhD at the University of Manchester as part of the BBSRC iCASE DTP program, with Shell as an industrial partner. Throughout his PhD, Sam engineered the prenyltransferase UbiX for biotechnological application and learned the curiosities of x-ray crystallography and solved the structure of multiple UbiX variants leading to a proposed biocatalytic mechanism of action.

When not in the lab, Sam is often found at his local park or up the hills in the peak district walking his dog, Daisy, with his wife. If he’s not in the lab or at the park, there is a high chance that Sam is watching cricket or football and complaining about how badly the team he supports are playing (which is happening more often than not lately).