Ever since Jana saw a map of metabolism, she was mesmerised by it and all research she has been involved in has been to understand metabolism better, in particular bacterial metabolism. How does it work? Why can they make all these different chemical compounds? How did this evolve? Are some of the questions that Jana is interested in.

Her current project is funded by the BBSRC in Lorena Fernández-Martínez lab, and is investigating specialised metabolism and how to awaken silent biosynthetic gene clusters in Streptomyces by comparing natural and laboratory cultivation conditions both on transcriptome and metabolome level. The findings of this will inform metabolic engineering strategies to produce clinically relevant bioactive compounds.

Jana joined the Biology Department at Edge Hill in early 2020. She is a molecular microbiologist with a background in biotechnology and her main interest is in microbial metabolism, its evolution, regulation and how it can be engineered.

In the past, Jana has worked at the University of Strathclyde on metabolic engineering of Streptomyces for her PhD with Prof Paul Hoskisson. Followed by a postdoc position in genetic tool development for antibiotic discovery and isolation of rare actinobacteria with Dr Paul Herron. More recently, Jana worked on a bioimaging project in the Physics department at Strathclyde characterising a newly developed axial super resolution imaging technique in Prof Gail McConnell research group.

Jana is an advocate for women in STEMM and has been a participant in Homeward Bound- a global female leadership initiative (https://homewardboundprojects.com.au/).