Miss Ntsoaki is a PhD candidate at the Centre for Microbial Ecology and Genomics (CMEG), in the Department of Genetics. Her research project is entitled "Structure-function analysis and engineering of a Paenibacillus mucilaginosus exoglucanase". The exoglucanase is a thermophilic, modular and bifunctional enzyme with two catalytic domains belonging to glycoside hydrolase families 5 and 6 and two carbohydrate binding modules belonging to family 3. The main of the research project is to elucidate the crystal structure of the exoglucanase by X-ray crystallography. Additionally, the project would like to fully characterise the exoglucanase and improve its properties by protein engineering.