Two new MRC grants awarded to Dr Helen Price & Dr Catherine Merrick
The latest round of MRC grant awards has seen two new research grants for Keele's Centre for Applied Entomology and Parasitology.
Dr Price, who joined CAEP in 2013 and who studies the molecular and cellular biology of Leishmania parasites, was awarded a New Investigator grant of ~£440,000. Her project will study the Leishmania orthologue of the 'BBSome' protein complex, which is essential for survival of the parasite in the host.
Dr Merrick, who has been with Keele CAEP since 2011 and became a Senior Lecturer in spring 2016, was awarded a Standard-Mode grant of ~£480,000 to follow on from her existing MRC funding. Her project is exploring G-quadruplex biology in the malaria parasite Plasmodium: it has already produced results including recent publications in Plos Pathogens and BMC Genomics, and this new grant will take the research to the genomic and transcriptomic levels via a range of cutting-edge techniques.
Dr Price, Dr Merrick and some of the parasitology researchers at a recent BSP conference.