Jessica Maree O'Loughlin
Thesis title: Metabolite Studies in Microbiome Manufacturing: Investigating the metabolism of Bacteroides, Clostridium, and Prevotella spp. co-cultures to improve probiotic production
Biological Sciences (With Internship) PhD
Year of study: 3
- The Institute of Quantitative Biology, Biochemistry and Biotechnology (IQB3)
- The School of Biological Sciences
- College of Science and Engineering
Contact details
- Email: s1907024@ed.ac.uk
PhD supervisor:
Address
- Street
- City
- Edinburgh
- Post code
Background
My PhD research, working in Karl Burgess’ group and with FUJIFILM Biotechnologies, aims to improve our understanding of the metabolic interactions that modulate the population dynamics of bacteria (gastrointestinal species Bacteroides cellulosilyticus, Clostridium beijerinckii, and Prevotella herbatica) when co-cultured. I utilise multiple wet-lab direct and in-direct anaerobic co-culture methods and molecular genetic techniques as well as developing computational pipelines to enhance the resolution and throughput of metabolomics data collected by mass spectrometry with Liquid Chromatography, Ion Mobility, and fragmentation dimensions to achieve my research outcomes.
This work is supported by my previous role at the EdinOmics Mass Spectrometry facility, where I developed and deployed Python Dash App reports to provide an easy-to-use interface for customers to manage multiple metabolomics projects and to automate standard statistical analyses for customers to include in their research outputs (https://doi.org/10.64898/2026.05.01.722139).
Qualifications
BSc Hons Biological Sciences (Biochemistry)