Richard James Acton

Email: RichardJActon@gmail.com
DOB: 30/10/1992
POB: Scotland – UK

1 Research Experience

1.1 MSc Research Project – circRNAs in daf-2 and daf-2/16 mutant C. elegans Neurons.

Supervisor: Irilenia Nobeli i.nobeli@mail.cryst.bbk.ac.uk

1.2 4th year project – Working on the B methylase in the N6-methyladensine RNA modification system in Arabidopsis.

Gene knock out in Arabidopsis using CRISPR, involving designing guide RNAs and producing transfection vectors using PCR and Golden Gate cloning. Using agrobacterial floral dip transfection to produce Arabidopsis transformants. Screening Arabidopsis plants for antibiotic resistance markers. Extracting RNA, using reverse transcription PCR to assess expression levels of cas9 in putative transformant plants and using capillary electrophoresis to screen for small mutations. Supervisor: Dr. Rupert Fray rupert.fray@nottingham.ac.uk

1.3 Summer Studentship 2014(BBSRC REP [Research experience placement]) – Working on Bd1483 a Bdellovibrio bacteriovorus protein.

Restriction cloning to attempt to create bacterial two hybrid vectors. Attempted to create vectors to produce genomic deletion and GFP tagged Bd1483 mutants by recombination using Gibson assembly cloning. Bd1483 expression analysis using reverse transcription PCR on existing RNA samples. Basic bioinformatic and phylogenetic analysis of Bd1483 [Sockett Lab]. Produced and purified by nickel affinity chromatography quantities of His Tagged Bd1483 protein from an existing construct. Bd1483 was identified by molecular weight using Denaturing SDS-PAGE. Screened for metal cation binding using native PAGE. Prepared crystal trays for Bd1483, successfully producing X-ray diffracting crystals. Produced and attempted to purify DivIVA protein in solution containing surfactants [Lovering Lab]. Supervisors: Professor Liz Sockett liz.sockett@nottingham.ac.uk, Dr. Andy Lovering a.lovering@bham.ac.uk

1.4 3rd year project – Interactions of PilZ proteins of the Cyclic-dimeric-3’→5’-Guanosine Mono Phosphate (c-di-GMP) signalling system in Bdellovibrio bacteriovorus.

Restriction cloning to produce Bacterial two hybrid vectors and Screening for interactions with other Bdellovibrio Proteins. Involving preparative and analytic DNA agarose gel electrophoresis and the Miller Assay to assess β-galactosidase activity as semi-quantitative indicator of the extent of interaction. Supervisor: Professor Liz Sockett liz.sockett@nottingham.ac.uk

1.5 Summer research placement – Identifying and expressing possible chlamydial effector protein genes in Human cell lines.

Examining a set of previously identified chlamydial effector proteins I noted that one contained a nuclear localisation sequence, and considered that searching for chlamydial genes with an NLS might be an effective method of identifying a sub-set of chlamydial effector proteins. Produced mammalian expression vectors containing fluorescently tagged possible chlamydial effector proteins using SLICE cloning; a recombination based cloning technique, this process involved custom primer design. Used high speed lithium borate DNA agarose gel electrophoresis. Transfected HeLa and U20s derived cell lines with the resulting vectors using lipotransfection. examined the subcellular localisation of proteins using wide-field fluorescence microscopy. Supervisor: Dr. Alan Huett Alan.Huett@nottingham.ac.uk

2 Education

2.1 Birkbeck University of London (2015-16)

MSc in Bioinformatics and Systems biology (Distinction). I undertook this degree to learn to program (a long-standing intention) and to extend my knowledge of statistics. Biology is increasingly a field to which data science is integral and in my experience the best wet work has a well-informed background in dry work and the best experimental design comes out a solid understanding of statistics.

2.2 Undergraduate (University of Nottingham 2011-15)

1st Class MSci with Honours in Biochemistry and Genetics from the University of Nottingham. (See 4.1 for detailed breakdown by module)

2.3 A-levels (The Sixth Form College Farnborough 2009-11)

(See 4.2 for results by module)

2.4 GCSEs (Frensham Heights School 2005-2009)

(Photography taken as an extra-curricular in 2007, French taken 1 year early in 2008)

2.5 Early life education

• École Internationale de Genève (La Grande Boissière campus), from 2003-2005 (Switzerland, Geneva)
• Cheddington Combined School 2000-2003 (UK)
• Osgood Elementary 1999 – 2000 (USA, Massachusetts)
• Cohasset Montessori 1997-1999 (USA, Massachusetts)
• Bagshot Montessori 1996-1997 (UK)

3 Activities outside of core studies

3.1 During time at Birkbeck

Elected President of the National Federation of Atheist, Humanist and Secular Student Societies (AHS) in July 2015 and served a 1 year term. This role involved among other things working as a part of a 3 person executive team and managing a team of volunteers. The planning and execution of national events with several 10s to several hundred attendees and reporting our activities to our board.

3.2 During time at Nottingham

• Website officer of the then Secular society for 1 year, President of the University of Nottingham Agnostics, Secularists and Humanists Society (UNASH) for 2 years. During my tenure the society or its members won 4 national awards including one for raising the highest total in the country (£1200) during our charity week, and one for organising the best regional convention.
• Course representative providing feedback on the experience of students to staff for 3 years, during which time I won a silver award from the education network for my contribution.

3.3 During A-levels

• Elected president of the Student Association (an NUS affiliated Student’s union) at the Sixth Form College Farnborough an institution with >3000 students. During which time I lead a 12 person team who, among other things; started a network of Subject Reps to feed back to staff on student experience, broke the record for the most money raised for charity in our Raising and Giving Week, organised events with budgets of up to £30,000 and dramatically reduced the college paper use by having all printers set to duplex by default. During this time I also sat on the college’s board of governors, sharing responsibility for the oversight of the college’s major strategic decisions and ~£17M budget.
• Winner of an award for outstanding contribution to college life.
• Recipient of the Farnborough advanced level extend project award (analogous to the Extended Project Qualification: EPQ) for a project entitled: As advances in genomics and recombinant DNA technology become available what aspects of the human genome will be changed and when will we begin to effect these changes?
• Participant in Computer Games Creation classes; creating simple games in basic.
• Member of the Farnborough Debating Union, during which time I represented the college in a competition.
• Royal Society of Chemistry - 43rd International Chemistry Olympiad 2011, 1st round, Bronze
• Emergency First Aider at work.

3.4 Academic Society memberships

• Member of the Biochemical Society
• Member of the British society for research on ageing

4 Appendices

4.1 Birkbeck MSc Bioinformatics with Systems Biology - Results by Module

4.2 Nottingham MSci Biochemistry and Genetics - Results by Module

L=Lecture, P=Practical  

4.3 A-level Results By module