Dr Alice Flint

Biochemistry PDRA

I am a biochemist with a major focus on metabolomics. I am interested in metabolic diversity, specialisation and how metabolism responds to changes in the environment, with experience in plants, bacteria and fungi.

At SAMS, I am working on the biochemical characterisation algae and protozoa from the CCAP collection.

Contact details:

As part of the Natural Products BioHUB project, I am working on the metabolomic characterisation of the CCAP collection at SAMS. The aim is to identify sustainable sources of valuable metabolites with potential in sectors such as agriculture and aquaculture. This research utilises analytical techniques including FTIR spectroscopy, HPLC, GC-MS and ion chromatography.

 

Current project

Natural Products BioHUB (BioHUB): Funded by UKRI. 2025-28

 

 

Kaminski Strauss S, Schirman D, Jona G, Brooks AN, Kunjapur AM, Nguyen Ba AN, Flint A, Solt A, Mershin A, Dixit A, Yona AH, Csörgő B, Busby BP, Hennig BP, Pál C, Schraivogel D, Schultz D, Wernick DG, Agashe D, Levi D, Zabezhinsky D, Russ D, Sass E, Tamar E, Herz E, Levy ED, Church GM, Yelin I, Nachman I, Gerst JE, Georgeson JM, Adamala KP, Steinmetz LM, Rübsam M, Ralser M, Klutstein M, Desai MM, Walunjkar N, Yin N, Aharon Hefetz N, Jakimo N, Snitser O, Adini O, Kumar P, Soo Hoo Smith R, Zeidan R, Hazan R, Rak R, Kishony R, Johnson S, Nouriel S, Vonesch SC, Foster S, Dagan T, Wein T, Karydis T, Wannier TM, Stiles T, Olin-Sandoval V, Mueller WF, Bar-On YM, Dahan O, Pilpel Y (2019) Evolthon: a community endeavor to evolve lab evolution. PLoS Biol, 17(3): e3000182. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3000182 

Flint A, Weir R, Mur LAJ, Cameron SJS (2025) Low-cost heating modalities allow the detection of biomarkers for plant infection using rapid evaporative ionization mass spectrometry (REIMS) that are pathogen specific. Anal Chem, 97(27): 14230-14238. https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.analchem.5c00226 

Bayless AM, Song L, Sorbello M, Ogden SC, Todd TS, Flint A, Maruta N, Tulu J, Drenichev M, Ntoukakis V, Ve T, Mobli M, Wan L, Liu Q, Dangl JL, Kobe B, Grant M, Nishimura MT (2025) The Arabidopsis TIRome informs the design of artificial TIR (Toll/interleukin-1 receptor) domain proteins. Proc Natl Acad Sci, 122(37): e2505893122. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2505893122 

Employment history

Since 2025 PDRA in Biochemistry. SAMS

2023-25 Senior Research Scientist. NetZeroNitrogen

2022-23 PDRA in Plant Pathology. University of Warwick

2022 PDRA in Bioanalytical Chemistry

 

Qualifications

2022 PhD 'The molecular and biochemical mechanisms underlying Anthracnose virulence and resistance in Capsicum'. Royal Holloway, University of London

2017 MSci Natural Sciences (Biochemistry). University of Cambridge