Mazin Nasralla

Profile

I studied Geology with Planetary Science as an undergraduate at the University of Manchester before transferring to the University of Manchester’s School of Physics and Astronomy where I studied 'Exoplanets and their Host stars' in Astronomy & Astrophysics (MSc).

Research interests

I have been using neutrons to probe the physical chemistry of liquid water in mimetic models of ocean worlds including Earth and Titan.  Liquid water has been taken as a pre-requisite for the evolution of Life in the Solar System but Standard Mean Ocean Water as we understand it, is likely very different in nature to Titan and the Uranian moons. 

Fifty years ago, Anfinsen gave us a framework within which to study the 3-D arrangement of a protein's atoms in space, or the protein-folding problem.  Anfinsen established the thermodynamic principles of biological structure in the physiological milieu.  For Anfinsen and his colleagues, the physiological milieu was a given, and it was enough to explore the boundaries of Life within that given solvent environment, but what if we were to change that solvent environment?  Many planetary scientists get excited when they find a 2nd Earth, or an ocean like Enceladus, that appears to share many characteristics with Earth, but I am more interested in the alien.

Over the course of my PhD, I have studied the solvation shell of the shark, in particular the spatial affinities of a model tripeptide, and the osmolytes urea and Trimethylamine-N-oxide (TMAO) which have opposing effects on the stability of the shark's protein.  Using neutrons from the ISIS Neutron and Muon source at Didcot, Oxfordshire, I showed that TMAO countered urea-induced protein denaturation by entrapping urea in an enhanced hydrogen bond network in the bulk solution preventing the accrual of urea in the molecular solvation layer at the peptide surface.  I also created a Titan-relevant aqueous ammonia and showed that ammonia addition leads to the enhanced tetrahedral organisation of liquid water's hydrogen bond network a result that is reminiscent of the ice-like motifs that physical chemists have long predicted for water around aqueous methane and non-polar solutes. 

My research is funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council.

Qualifications

• 2020. MSc by Research in Astronomy and Astrophysics
• 2018. BSc Geology with Planetary Science