Contact
Biography
Dr Jon Hobman
Associate Professor of Microbiology
Jon's research interests centre on bacterial metal ion homeostasis and resistance, antimicrobial resistance, co-selection, and pathogenic enterobacteria. Current research areas include:
- Bacterial resistance to antimicrobial metals.
- Gene regulation of antimicrobial metal resistance genes.
- Antimicrobial resistance plasmids and co-selection in Gram-negative bacteria.
- Laboratory and pathogenic Escherichia coli.
- Molecular methods for studying bacterial gene regulation and expression.
- Molecular methods for engineering Gram-negative bacteria.
Teaching Summary
- Degree convenor for the C501 BSc Microbiology degree
- Module convenor for:
BIOS3013 Microbial Isolation and identification module
BIOS3010 Microbial Fermentation module
BIOS3093 Rapid Methods in Microbiology
Research Summary
- My research interests are centred on how bacteria respond to different insults, stresses and changes in external environmental conditions- including antimicrobial agents and the co-selection problem. We are addressing how these systems work through studies on gene regulation and control of gene expression.
- Allied to this is an interest in understanding how old and new antimicrobial treatments kill bacteria, and how bacteria are resistant to them.
- I am particularly interested in how bacteria respond to different metal-ion stresses. These stresses can be caused by either excessive or insufficient amounts of essential metal ions or by the presence of toxic metal ions in the bacterial cell.
- Bacteria have evolved metal-ion specific transcriptional regulators which sense intracellular metal-ion levels and switch on genes involved in removing or detoxifying these metals, or switch off genes that import metals. I am particularly interested in understanding how regulators sense the metal-ion or other cognate chemical species within the cell that they sense and how they regulate transcription of genes involved in the cellular response.
- We are using comparative functional genomics and molecular microbiology techniques (bioinformatics, gene knockout technology, epitope tagging, reporter gene fusions, site directed mutagenesis, transcriptomics, and chIP on chip and chIP-seq) to study gene regulation and to analyse differences in responses to stress between laboratory and pathogenic Escherichia coli strains. As part of this I am involved in technology platform development, working on increasing the resolution and developing new uses for post-genomic technologies.
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Media summary: Bacterial gene expression, antimicrobial metal resistance, Escherichia coli, transcriptomics,
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