Sam Hay

Background:

The Hay group are interested in how biological processes – reactions and interactions – are governed by their underlying physics/physical chemistry. The main focus of this work is the role of protein dynamics and quantum mechanics during enzyme catalysis and the use of proteins and enzymes as structural and/or functional biomaterials and sensors. This work employs both experimental and theoretical approaches, with an emphasis on instrument and method development and the development of new theory and models to underpin experiment. Much of the work involves computational chemistry, often combing molecular dynamics (MD) simulations with enzyme active site density functional theory (DFT) ‘cluster’ models.

Sam received a first class honours degree in biochemistry from the University of Otago, New Zealand (2000), and his PhD in biophysics from the Australian National University (2005). He spent a year at Stockholm University as a Wenner-Gren visiting postdoctoral fellow (2004-2005) before moving to the University of Manchester to work with Nigel Scrutton as a postdoctoral research associate. Sam was a recipient of the RSC Rita and John Cornforth Award in 2009 and in 2010 he received a BBSRC David Phillips fellowship. In 2014 he was made a lecturer, in 2017 senior lecturer, in 2019 reader and in 2021 he became Professor of Biophysical Chemistry.

In silico enzymology

We use a range of computational chemistry, machine learning and bio/cheminformatics approaches to study a range of (bio)chemical systems, with a major focus on enzymes. Molecular dynamics in combination with homology modelling and molecular docking can generate (literally) working models of proteins, which are difficult or impossible to crystallise. Ab initio and DFT methods are used to model enzyme active sites, study enzyme chemistry, and augment X-ray crystallography studies, e.g. when characterising new cofactors.

The role of quantum mechanics in biological processes

While the physical laws underpinning biochemistry and enzymology are generally classical (Newtonian) in nature, we have shown that quantum mechanical tunnelling can play a major role in enzymatic hydrogen transfer reactions. We are now interested in how ubiquitous this phenomenon is, and whether room temperature tunnelling is also a feature of heavy atom rearrangement and transfer during catalysis. We are also interested in whether enzymes actively exploit tunnelling by coupling environmental dynamics to the reaction coordinate, effectively compressing the reaction barrier. A major focus of our work is the development of models that can ‘join the dots’ between the computational and experimental approaches that are jointly used to study these reactions.

Instrument, Method and Model development

We are also interested in instrument and experimental method development that can be used to test our computationally-led hypotheses. Current work includes time-resolved infrared methods that probe vibrational energy transfer in proteins, novel data analysis methods for time-resolved spectroscopy and kinetic measurements, and machine learning models for the analysis (bio)materials and computational data.

We recruit from a wide range of backgrounds, including biochemistry, chemistry, physics, engineering, applied mathematics and computer science.

We are always interested in talking to self-funded students and prospective postdoctoral/visiting researchers and can tailor projects to your interests and strengths - i.e. 'dry' (theoretical/computational), 'damp' (mixed theory and experiment) and 'wet' (experimental) projects are all possible.

Funded BBSRC DTP PhD projects are advertised between October-November here.

Funded joint Manchester-Singapore A*STAR PhD projects are advertised here.

Other vacancies will be advertised on the Universtiy Jobs website and often also on naturejobs.com

I am interested in teaching the chemistry that underpins biochemistry as well as aspects of biological and physical chemistry and enzymology. I take physical chemistry tutorials and until 2019 took biochemistry (for FBMH) tutorials. I supervise MChem and MSc students and regularly also supervise MSci and MSc students from FBMH.  I currently lecture on: CHEM10111 (for FBMH), CHEM20722, CHEM30712, and CHEM31812 (for FBMH).

From 2018-22 I was undergraduate external examiner, physical/computational chemistry, at the University of Greenwich, UK

I am alway happy to give public lectures on 'Quantum biology' and related topics at Pint of Science, SciBAR and similar events.

Most of the group is shared/co-supervised among others in the MIB and Department of Chemistry.