Bacterial Hunger Games: Targeting Nutrient Transport for Novel Antibiotic Development

Project Code

MRCIIAR26Ba Preston

Project Type

Wet lab

Research Theme

Infection, Immunity, Antimicrobial Resistance and Repair

Project Summary Download

Summary

Most current antibiotics are derivatives of previous drugs and resistance adapts quickly to the new derivatives, greatly limiting their useful lifespan. New antibiotics with novel bacterial targets are desperately needed. In this project we will develop bacterial nutrient transporters as novel antibiotic targets. Inhibiting nutrient uptake will slow bacterial growth, allowing immune responses to clear the infection, and/or augmenting current antibiotic use. As proof-of-principle for this approach we will use metabolic modeling to identify target transporters, genetic engineering and novel peptide inhibitors to drug them and single cell imaging to test the effects of this on cell growth and viability.

Lead Supervisor

Professor Andrew Preston

Lead Supervisor Email

a.preston@bath.ac.uk

University Affiliation

Bath