Tracey Gloster

In her early career she was funded by the Wellcome Trust, initially with a Sir Henry Wellcome post-doctoral fellowship held between 2008 and 2011 at Simon Fraser University, Canada, where she worked with David Vocadlo,[1][2] and then a Wellcome Trust Research Career Development fellowship in 2012 when she joined the University of St Andrews, Scotland where she now holds the position of Reader.[3]

Her research is about all aspects of enzymes that deal with carbohydrates within eukaryotes.[3] Carbohydrates are made from a very wide range of sugar molecules that can be attached to each and other molecules in diverse ways. These glycosylations can have profound consequences for the roles and activities of the molecules and can result in disease if the cell does not process them correctly. Identifying the location and nature of glycosylations is technically challenging, in addition to the challenge of linking them to functions. Gloster has applied inhibitors to gain more understanding about exactly how they work, including describing a new class of glycosyltransferase inhibitors.[4] The techniques that Gloster uses includes ones based around cells, including molecular biology and cell cultures, as well as biophysical methods such as enzyme kinetics, X-ray crystallography and isothermal titration calorimetry.[5]

Gloster was awarded the Biochemical Society Early Career Research Award Theme Panel II Molecular Structure and Function in 2012,[6] the L’Oreal UK and Ireland Fellowship For Women In Science Fellowship in 2013[3] and she was awarded the Dextra Medal by the Royal Society of Chemistry in 2019 for her work in carbohydrate chemistry largely conducted in the UK within 15 years of gaining a PhD.

She is a member of the Royal Society International Exchanges Committee between 2017 - 2022.[7] She is treasurer of the Royal Society of Chemistry Carbohydrate Interest Group.[8] She chairs one of the review panels that judge requests to use the Diamond Light Source.[9]

She is a member of the Young Academy of Scotland.[3]

Gloster is the author or co-author of over 56 scientific publications. They include:

• Athukoralage, J. S., McMahon, S., Zhang, C., Gruschow, S., Graham, S., Krupovic, M., Whitaker, R., Gloster, T. & White, M., (2020) An anti-CRISPR viral ring nuclease subverts type III CRISPR immunity Nature. 577 7791 572-575
• Gloster, T. M., (2020) Exploitation of carbohydrate processing enzymes in biocatalysis Current Opinion in Chemical Biology. 55 180-188
• Ren, W., Pengelly, R. J., Farren-Dai, M., Abadi, S. S. K., Oehler, V., Akintola, O., Draper, J., Meanwell, M., Chakladar, S., Świderek, K., Moliner, V., Britton, R., Gloster, T. & Bennet, A., (2018) Revealing the mechanism for covalent inhibition of glycoside hydrolases by carbasugars at an atomic level Nature Communications 9 3243
• Griffin, L. S. & Gloster, T. M., 1 Aug (2017) The enzymatic degradation of heparan sulfate Protein & Peptide Letters 24 710-722
• Gloster, T. M., (2014) Advances in understanding glycosyltransferases from a structural perspective Current Opinion in Structural Biology 28 131-141
• Gloster, T. M. & Vocadlo, D. J., (2012) Developing inhibitors of glycan processing enzymes as tools for enabling glycobiology Nature Chemical Biology 8 683-694

Tracey M. Gloster studied biochemistry at University of Warwick, graduating in 2002[1] and then moved to University of York. She graduated with a PhD from there in April 2006, having worked with Gideon Davies.[4]

• Tracey Gloster publications indexed by Google Scholar