Bacterial Molecules and Pathways

The Bacterial Molecules and Pathways group has research interests in:

• The respiration of nitrogenous compounds in different bacteria, at structural, biophysical, enzymological, genetic and physiological levels
• The role of iron in bacteria, both as a respiratory substrate and as a signal molecule for gene regulation
• Streptomyces: regulation of gene expression, mechanism of antibiotic resistance and molecular cell biology of differentiation, in these complex, biotechnologically important bacteria
• Sulphur metabolism: the structures of proteins that oxidize sulphur and the bacterial production of the climate-changing gas dimethyl sulphide
• Metagenomics: the use of pan-genomic molecular tools to examine the properties of microbial populations in complex natural environments
• DNA Ligase: comparative enzymology in different bacteria, including Actinomycetes, and in higher organisms
• Technology development, especially exploiting electrochemistry of enzymes as biosensors and for studying enzymatic mechanisms
• Protein bioinformatics to predict intra-molecular protein movement

	Prof Andrew Johnston Molecular genetics of iron uptake in Rhizobium Iron-responsive gene regulation in α-proteobacteria Metagenomics of the Nitrogen Cycle
	Prof David Richardson Biochemistry of the bacterial nitrogen cycle Electron transfer at the microbe-mineral interface Anaerobic metabolism of bacterial pathogens
	Dr Richard Bowater prokaryotic DNA repair pathways proteins that join breaks in nucleic acids genetic instability of DNA repeats
	Dr Tom Clarke Application of biophysical and spectroscopic techniques of protein-protein interactions. The mechanism of electron transfer between redox active proteins. Catalytic properties of metalloproteins involved in bacterial respiration
	Dr Matt Hutchings Signal transduction pathways in the streptomycetes and mycobacteria How bacteria sense and respond to cell envelope stress Processing, structure and function of cell surface proteins
	Dr Andrew Hemmings X-ray structural and mechanistic studies of enzymes Metal-protein recognition and the mechanisms of metal homeostasis in bacteria Bioinformatics & protein structure prediction, particularly of cofactor-rich proteins
	Dr Gabriella Kelemen Role of specific RNA polymerase holoenzymes controlling bacterial evelopment Cytoskeletal proteins of Streptomyces coelicolor Chromosome organisation during hyphal growth and sporulation
	Dr Gary Rowley Integration of envelope stress responses and their function in Salmonella infection. Salmonella virulence gene regulation by the nucleoid associated proteins Hha and YdgT. The role of nitric oxide and oxygen as signalling molecules during pathogenesis.
	Dr Nicholas Watmough The formation and consumption of nitric oxide (NO) in denitrifying bacteria Oxidases and peroxidases in bacterial microaerobic metabolism The application of time-resolved spectroscopies to the study of metalloproteins