“I joined Quadram Institute to start my Fellowship in February this year. I am a chemist who has always been fascinated by biology, and I want to use NMR to study microbes in their native environment.

The power of Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR)

I’m passionate about NMR. NMR stands for Nuclear Magnetic Resonance and is a spectroscopic technique that allows you to visualise atoms in their chemical environment.  To me, NMR allows you to see atoms. We can analyse many different atoms, but in chemical biology we mainly focus on hydrogen, carbon and nitrogen.

If you put the same molecule in every NMR machine you will get pretty much the same pattern, called a spectrum, which contains precious information about the structure and concentration of that molecule. In this sense, NMR is very reproducible, which is a great advantage in science.

The overlap between NMR and biology expertise is quite small. People that work on NMR don’t often work on microbes. They’re quite separate fields. I’m trying to bridge that gap between NMR and microbiology in my fellowship.

In particular, I see the potential of NMR to study biological systems in a holistic and untargeted manner, and in conditions as close to their physiological environment.

In other analysis techniques if you want to study a dynamic biological process, for example a reaction, you have to sample a test tube at different time points and heavily manipulate the sample. Using NMR, we can set the process to take place in the NMR tube and watch what happens to all its hydrogens or carbons in real-time. We can tell how a molecule transforms into a different one, for example enzymatically, if something gets taken up or released from cells, how the pH of the sample changes, if two things bind to each other, and even if two microbial species are exchanging small molecules between each other.

Before I started my fellowship, I worked at the University of East Anglia (UEA) for ten years working on NMR. I particularly focused on methodology development of NMR and I helped other people to answer different biological questions.

From teeth to a link to colon cancer: a focus on Fusobacterium nucleatum

Now in my fellowship, I’m focusing on one biological question to answer with NMR. I chose to focus on the bacteria Fusobacterium nucleatum.

Most of the time Fusobacterium nucleatum lives relatively harmlessly in the mouth, though it can form plaque and play a role in gum disease. Until 10 years ago, the only papers about Fusobacterium nucleatum were in relation to teeth.

Recently Fusobacterium nucleatum has been found to be overrepresented and associated with colorectal cancer.

We know that Fusobacterium nucleatum produces a lot of hydrogen sulphide gas which affects the body. We also know that high concentrations of hydrogen sulphide gas are found at the colorectral cancer site.

Still, we don’t know the exact mechanisms by which this bacterium contributes to colorectal cancer. So in my research I am hoping to use NMR to understand from the molecular point of view which pathway produces the hydrogen sulphide and why and how these differ between the mouth and the cancer site.

There are three possible biological pathways that the bacteria use to make hydrogen sulphide. Using NMR I can identify and quantify which one is taking place in different experimental conditions, and follow these processes in real time.

At the moment my main aim is to find ways to allow us to observe such cellular process in an NMR tube.  It’s a learning curve because I’m in the initial stages of my fellowship and working with microbes is new for me but it’s very exciting.

It’s amazing the resources we have on Norwich Research Park. There are two NMR machines at the John Innes Centre and there are seven at UEA in the chemistry department. At the John Innes Centre there is one NMR machine which is incredibly sensitive, allowing the study of minuscule amounts of material. While UEA has a range of machines with different sensitivity that can be used for different purposes, including studying soft matter and solids .

If I can discover new things about the gut microbiome using NMR, that will be my achievement. At the same time, if I can get more microbiologists to use NMR to answer their questions, that would also be a pretty cool accomplishment.

A career in chemistry

My career in science started as an environmental sciences undergraduate student in Italy. After one year of studying chemistry, physics, informatic biology and geology I realised I wanted to focus on one expertise only, and I decided that that would be chemistry.

I was mind blown by organic chemistry, as drawing reaction mechanisms gave me first the idea of “seeing” atoms. When I went to the organic chemistry lab though, I didn’t find myself enjoying synthetic chemistry. The best part of it was to use NMR to visualise what was happening at the end of each reaction, and I realised this was probably the best way through which I could actually see atoms.

I chose a Masters thesis in the NMR of carbohydrates and enzymatic conversion in Copenhagen. My enthusiasm for the topic was such that in my Masters thesis opening I adapted the citation from the children’s book The Little Prince, from: “It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye” to “It is only with NMR that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye”.

I moved to the UK to follow this passion for NMR, carbohydrate and biological processes. After I finished my Masters in Copenhagen, I sat down and tried my luck typing “PhD NMR carbohydrates Europe” on Google. It is very niche but I was adamant to go where this would bring me. I found a PhD position to study protein-carbohydrate interactions by NMR in the Norwich Research Park and I thought, I’m going there! During my first PhD year I met Professor Nathalie Juge based at the Quadram Institute, and got hooked to the world of gut microbiota studies.

After my PhD at UEA, I stayed at UEA for two Postdoctoral roles with two maternity breaks in the middle. I worked in two different groups in the School of Pharmacy and expanded to using NMR to analyse different biomolecular processes and interactions.

Flexibility in the fellowship

The Quadram Institute was my dream place to work. The fundamental aspect of the institute’s research and how much there is to discover about the gut microbiome was very exciting to me.

My fellowship is part-time, I work four days a week. I have two small children and I haven’t worked full time since I had them. I find the extra day off a week gives me a day to breathe. Even though I’m not working that day, I find it also gives me more time to think about my research and for inspiration to come.

It’s great that the Quadram Institute has a very positive research culture here and great respect for people’s work-life balance and accommodates this arrangement, which also means that my fellowship will last 20% longer than the 3 years full time.

I found the process of applying for the Quadram Institute Early Career Fellowship great. Everyone was very welcoming at the interview and the working environment is so brilliant.

I am so grateful and excited to have been given this opportunity; without previous experience in a microbiology lab, this is a big leap for me and I am on a steep learning curve. But they trusted my potential and big ideas, so here I am. My advice to someone thinking of applying to do a fellowship is to think big, be ambitious and go for it.”

• Applications are currently open for the Quadram Early Career Fellowship, closing 1 June 2025