I am a Sci-Phy CDT student working on a PhD project that will develop mass spectrometry to probe the effect of phosphorylation on the structure of proteins implicated in ageing. The hypothesis is that measurements made on protein fragments can be reconstructed to determine protein structure, a kind of 'biomolecular tetris'. This will be achieved through studying salt bridges that arise from the interaction between phosphate groups and basic amino acid side-chains. Data from tandem mass spectrometry (MS-MS), ion mobility spectrometry (IMS) and computational studies will be combined into a multi-dimensional dataset that will be used to infer information about the tertiary structure of phosphoproteins.

Publications

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8413-496X

2019

1. A.L. Simmonds, A.F. Lopez-Clavijo, P.J. Winn, D.H. Russell, I.B. Styles and H.J. Cooper. Structural analysis of 14-3-3-ζ-derived phosphopeptides using electron capture dissociation mass spectrometry, travelling wave ion mobility spectrometry, and molecular modeling. The Journal of Physical Chemistry, 461-469.

2018

1. R.L. Griffiths, A.L. Simmonds, J. Swales, R. Goodwin and H.J. Cooper. LESA MS imaging of heat preserved and frozen tissue: Benefits of multi-step static FAIMS. Analytical Chemistry, 13306-13314.

2017

1. R.L. Griffiths, E.K. Sisley, A.F. Lopez-Clavijo, A.L. Simmonds, I.B. Styles and H.J. Cooper. Native mass spectrometry imaging of intact proteins and protein complexes in thin tissue sections. International Journal of Mass Spectrometry, 23-29.