Howard Group Honours Projects

COVID-19, COVID-19 variants and Influenza are critical pandemic threat pathogens and their monitoring and rapid sensitive detection in the community is vital. The project will explore and develop innovative fusion proteins and bionanomaterials as probes for the detection of infectious diseases, focused on respiratory virus pathogens such as Sars Cov2, SCV2 variants, influenza, RSV and rhinoviruses, which are significant threats to the population. These reagents will be bioengineered with multifunctional components including high-affinity binding elements for viral targets and programmed with self-signalling capabilities utilising reporter enzymes, chromoproteins and fluorescent proteins. The reagents will be applied and translated in diagnostic platforms, for example lateral flow-based assays, which will also be developed as part of the project and tested on real life patient samples. This project will build skills in molecular biology, protein design and bioengineering, protein analytics, diagnostic platform and bioassay development. Project will provide excellent foundations for future RHD studies.