Taming microbes

Some microbes make us sick, others are important to our health and the environment. Biofilms, communities of microbes that attach to each other and surfaces, are central to our most important global challenges – from antimicrobial resistance and food safety to water security. Our bug-resistant polymers applied to urinary catheters and development of vaccines against pathogenic bacteria are making a difference to people’s lives.

Understanding, tracking and predicting microbe evolution and sociology is of critical relevance to antimicrobial resistance.

Multidisciplinary approaches to understand bacterial community dynamics provide new ways to prevent, detect, manage and engineer biofilms.

Our research into how bacteria control virulence by communication (quorum sensing) and environmental sensing gives new insight into mechanisms.

We investigate bacterial membrane biogenesis, protein secretion and the relationship between quorum sensing and metabolism. This provides new approaches to tackle microbial and biofilm-mediated infections.

We use model systems and computation in our research. This includes three dimension skin infection models to understand biofilm micro-niches. Environmental surveillance and molecular genetics gives insight into how plague (black death) spreads.

Artificial Intelligence is used to tract antimicrobial resistance, while biofilm resistant biomaterials are incorporated into medical devices to avoid infections.

Theme Leads: Kim Hardie and Stephan Heeb

Research project highlights

• Jack Bryant. Royal Society; £19K; Consequences of Gram-negative bacterial lipopolysaccharide modifications on outer membrane protein biogenesis

• Ellis O'Neill. EPSRC New Investigator International Collab Award; £157K; Investigating biosynthesis of the newly discovered natural product euglenatide and distribution across the breadth of Euglenoid algae

• Kim Hardie. BBSRC; £1.3M; A brighter future cutting-edge multiphoton imaging at Nottingham

• Miguel Camara. BBSRC; £748K; Full Spectrum Cell Sorter for Nottingham and the Midlands

• Miguel Camara. BBSRC Resource Grant; £1M; Enhancing regional growth at the National Biofilms Innovation Centre

• Miguel Camara. BBSRC; £300K; National Biofilms Innovation Centre FTMA

• Ingrid Dreveny. BBSRC; £698K; Exploring the metabolic diversity of engineered fungal non-ribosomal peptide synthetase-like enzymes for the development of novel antibiotics

• Steve Atkinson. International Science Partnerships Fund (Research England); £18K; Maintenance and transmission of Yersinia pestis (plague) in Madagascan forest environments

• Kim Hardie was awarded the Microbiology Society Outreach Prize and received the Freedom of the City of London by redemption

Our researchers

Search the table below to find out more about our researchers. You are able to filter the table by searching for names, keywords, and techniques.

 

Full list of our researchers

Name	Research keywords	Research techniques
Steve Atkinson	Yersinia pestis, plague, black death, molecular genetic pathways, antibiotic resistance	Plague insect infection, soil infection, molecular genetics of plague
Miguel Camara	Biofilms, quorum sensing, antimicrobials, microbial gene regulation, antimicrobial target discovery	Biofilm model design, biofilm imaging, bacterial transcriptomics, bioreporter design, HTP antimicrobial testing
Weng Chan	Antibiotic discovery, medicinal chemistry, chemical biology, anti-virulence, peptide chemistry	Solid-phase peptide synthesis, organic synthesis, in vitro microbial assay, drug design
Jonas Emsley	Structural biology, protein crystallography, protease structure, receptor structure, drug development	Protein crystallography, isothermal titration calorimetry, surface plasmon resonance, molecular docking
Ruth Griffin	Oral vaccine delivery systems, infectious diseases	Gene cloning and protein purification, formulation, in vivo immunogenicity and challenge studies, antibody assays
Kim Hardie	Biofilms, antimicrobial resistance, bacteria, pathogenicity, protein secretion	Fluorescent microscopy, infection models, microbiology, protein biochemistry, metabolite detection
John Heap	Engineering biology/ synthetic biology, metabolic engineering, biotechnology, biocatalysis, enzyme evolution	Engineering biology/ synthetic biology, metabolic engineering, biotechnology, biocatalysis, enzyme evolution
Stephan Heeb	Bacterial infections, virulence, quorum sensing, gene expression, antimicrobial strategies	Bacterial genomics, RNA-Seq, RNA-protein interactions, construction of bacterial vectors
Katalin Kovacs	Engineering biology, metabolic engineering, autotrophic microorganisms, bioelectochemical synthesis, circular economy	Molecular biology, microscopy, microbial cultivation, electrofermentation, plastid engineering
Nigel Minton	Exploiting autotrophy, reducing carbon emissions, industrial biotechnology, microbial pathogenesis, anaerobes	Synthetic biology, metabolic engineering, gas fermentation, genome editing, therapeutic delivery systems
Ellis O'Neil	Natural products, algal biotechnology, biotransformation	Analytical chemistry, mass spectrometry, protein expression and purification, genome mining
Karen Robinson	Helicobacter pylori, antimicrobial resistance, infection and immunity, gastric cancer, bacterial virulence	Flow cytometry, real-time PCR, immunohistochemistry, antimicrobial sensitivity testing, immune cell purification and culture
Felicity Rose	Biointerfaces; biomaterials; peptide materials; hydrogels; computational material science	Surface modification and analysis; polymerisation kinetics; light and enzyme responsive materials; material characterisation
Panos Soultanas	DNA replication, DNA repair, replication-metabolism regulation, genome stability	Protein expression, purification, polymerase and helicase assays, analytical ultracentrifugation, SPR
Paul Williams	Quorum sensing, biofilms, bacteria, biomaterials, antimicrobial agents	Bacterial genetics, bacterial culture, antimicrobial assays, quorum sensing assays, microscopy/ imaging
Klaus Winzer	Microbial metabolism, biological engineering, synthetic biology, bacterial carbon capture, quorum sensing	Anaerobic microbiology, gas fermentation, genetic modification of bacteria, adaptive laboratory evolution
Ying Zhang	Industrial biotechnology, biological engineering, single-carbon utilising bacteria for carbon capture, sustainable bioproducts, biorecovery.	Synthetic biology, bacterial genome editing, metabolic engineering, protein engineering, strain improvement

View our publications