Thomas Slater
- Lancaster University
My name is Tommy, I’m a PhD student based primarily at Lancaster University. When I’m not working, I’m usually found playing board or card games (particularly Dungeons and Dragons), at a bouldering wall or drinking hot chocolate. I did my undergraduate degree in Biomedical Science, initially intending to work in the NHS but instead became enamoured by the complex mechanisms behind host-pathogen interactions and found the evolutionary ‘arms race’ wherein pathogens and hosts adapt to circumvent each other’s resistances fascinating. Subsequently I carried out an MSc by Research at Lancaster University which further deepened my interest in the interplay between hosts and pathogens and allowed me to develop a skillset as a protein scientist.
My PhD research with the NorthWestBio scheme continues in this area, aiming to identify and subsequently structurally and functionally characterise proteins involved in Archaeal anti-viral immunity under the supervision of Nick Robinson & Leonie Unterholzner at Lancaster University and Helen Walden at the University of Glasgow. Archaea represent one of the three divisions of life and comparatively little is known about how these organisms mediate defence against viral infection, with Archaea being particularly interesting from an evolutionary perspective as members of the Archaea represent the closest known Prokaryotic relatives to Eukaryotes. We therefore hope that by exploring the mechanisms by which Archaea mediate viral defence we will better understand the nuances of these organisms and potentially shed light on the evolutionary origins of components of the eukaryotic innate immune system.