My PhD aim is to develop new synthetic biology tools to solve some of the current bottlenecks in fungal natural product discovery. Through iterations of the Design-Build-Test-Learn cycle, new vector sets and methodologies will be established, creating alternative pipelines to elucidate silent biosynthetic gene clusters. My PhD project(s) allowed me to explore many of my interest areas, as CRISPR/Cas technologies, gene expression control, secondary metabolism, non-conventional chassis for bioproduction, genome engineering, and more. I am happy to have contributed to the synthetic biology toolbox of filamentous fungi by establishing a fungal CRISPRa system and working towards other tools to accelerate fungal natural product discovery.

Indra Roux is a PhD student in the School of Molecular Sciences, at the University of Western Australia. Indra studied Biotechnology at the National University of Quilmes, Argentina completing a research project on riboregulation in rhizobia. She has a strong interest in the application and development of synthetic biology for improving bioproduction, and its use as an interpretative framework to understand biology. This interest led her to pursue her PhD in the Laboratory of Fungal Chemistry & Biology, under the supervision of Dr. Yit-Heng Chooi at UWA.