Charllotte Blacka

Research

Supervisor/s: Dr Jessica Hendy and Professor Kirsty Penkman

Funding: Adapting to the Challenges of a Changing Environment (ACCE) DTP

Amelogenin is a protein formed in the teeth that has shown great promise as the future of sex-determination of fossils, since its form varies between biological males and females. Unfortunately however, at the present time, the use of amelogenin for sex-determination can be time-consuming and costly, making it difficult to implement commercially and in large studies. My research aims to develop a new, cheaper and easier method to identify the forms of this protein present (and therefore the biological sex of the fossilised remains) so as to make amelogenin sex-determination more viable. Primarily the aim of the project will be to utilise high performance liquid-chromatography-mass spectrometry (HPLC-MS) due to its high-throughput capacity.