2021 PhD in Biochemistry, The University of Western Australia

2015 BSc (Honours) in Chemistry, Lomonosov Moscow State University

2021-2026 Postdoctoral Researcher, John Innes Centre (UK)

2015-2017 Research Assistant, Lomonosov Moscow State University (Russia)

Originally trained as a chemist in Moscow State University, where I worked on developing the activity assays for an anticancer enzyme L-asparaginase, I have always been fascinated by how small molecules drive the behaviour of living organisms. Therefore, I chose to join Joshua Mylne’s lab at the University of Western Australia to do a PhD on repurposing drugs to discover new herbicidal modes of action.

Then to deepen my training in molecular biology and protein biochemistry I joined Tung Le’s lab at the John Innes Centre in 2021. In the first half of my postdoc, I focused on understanding the molecular details of vertical gene transfer in S. coelicolor. Normally, bacteria ensure the reliable plasmid inheritance by employing a ParABS system centred around a CTP driven molecular switch ParB. In my study, I showed that a truncated version of the ParABS system can segregate DNA in a CTP-independent manner, thus challenging the view that CTP binding is a universal feature of ParB-like proteins. This work sparked my interest in atypical ParB-like switches and in my next project, we surveyed the multitude of microbial genomes for ParB-like proteins and found them vastly diversified in domain architecture and particularly common in mobile genetic elements. Our results show that ParB-like functions potentially diversify far beyond their traditional role in chromosome segregation and cell division, and these roles are the focus of my research group.

In search for novel functions of ParB-like proteins I have noticed that some atypical ParB homologues are associated with bacterial antiviral defence systems. The evolutionary hotspot of bacteria and viruses interaction has enriched the fundamental biology with pivotal discoveries like CRISPR-Cas and restriction modification systems. Therefore, I focus my research programme on the ParB-like proteins implicated in bacterial antiviral defence. By investigating novel biological functions of ParB-like proteins I anticipate impacting not only the narrow field of antiviral systems biology, but also a broader field of nucleotide-dependent molecular switches.

BIO3315 Principles of Microbiology

BIO3315L Principles of Microbiology (Lab)

BIO4115L Biochemistry (Lab)

1. K. V. Sukhoverkov, F. Balaguer-Perez, C. Aicart-Ramos, N. T. Tran, A. Maqbool, M. Rejzek, G. Chandra, F. Moreno-Herrero, T. B. K. Le (2025). “Expanding the diversity of bacterial DNA partitioning: A CTP-independent ParABS system for plasmid partitioning in Streptomyces”, PNAS, 122 (27), e2406398122

2. J. Kaljević, K. V. Sukhoverkov (co-first author), K. Johnson, A. Hocher, T. B. K. Le (2025). “Versatile NTP recognition and domain fusions expand the functional repertoire of the ParB-CTPase fold beyond chromosome segregation”, PNAS, 122 (49), e2527592122

3. K. V. Sukhoverkov, A. S. B Jalal, J. R. Ault, F. Sobott, D. M. Lawson, T. B. K. Tung (2023). “The CTP-binding domain is disengaged from the DNA-binding domain in a co-crystal structure of Bacillus subtilis Noc-DNA complex”, Journal of Biological Chemistry, 299 (4): 103063

4. G. Vadlamani, K. V. Sukhoverkov (co-first author), J. Haywood, K. J. Breese, M. F. Fisher, K. A. Stubbs, C. S. Bond, J. S. Mylne (2022) “Crystal structure of Arabidopsis thaliana HPPK/DHPS, a bifunctional enzyme and target of the herbicide asulam”, Plant Communications, 3: 100322

5. K. V. Sukhoverkov, K. J. Breese, A. W. Debowski, M. W. Murcha, K. A. Stubbs, J. S. Mylne (2022) “Inhibition of chloroplast translation as a new target for herbicides”, RCS Chemical Biology, 3, 37

6. K. V. Sukhoverkov and J. S. Mylne, (2021) “Systematic, small-scale screening with Arabidopsis reveals herbicides synergies that extend to lettuce” Pest Manag Sci, 77 (11), 4930

7. K. V. Sukhoverkov, M. G. Corral, J. Leroux, J. Haywood, P. Johnen, T. Newton, K. A. Stubbs, J. S. Mylne (2021) “Improved herbicide discovery using physico-chemical rules refined by antimalarial library screening”, RCS Advances, 11: 8459