Molecular Microbiology News

Legumes give nitrogen-supplying bacteria special access pass
December 2011
A 120-year debate on how nitrogen-fixing bacteria are able to breach the cell walls of legumes has been settled. A paper published by John Innes Centre scientists, with Professor Allan Downie from the Molecular Microbiology department as the lead author, reports that plants themselves allow bacteria in.

Once inside the right cells, these bacteria take nitrogen from the air and supply it to legumes in a form they can use, ammonia. Whether the bacteria breach the cell walls by producing enzymes that degrade it, or the plant does the work for them, has been contested since an 1887 paper in which the importance of the breach was first recognised.

"Our results are so clear we can unequivocally say that the plant supplies enzymes to break down its own cell walls and allow bacteria access," said Professor Allan Downie.

Novel method for increasing antibiotic yields
September 2011
A novel way of increasing the amounts of antibiotics produced by bacteria has been discovered that could markedly improve the yields of these important compounds in commercial production. It could also be valuable in helping to discover new compounds. With the ever-growing threat from antibiotic resistance, these tools will be very useful in ensuring that we have enough of these useful compounds in the future.

The majority of antibiotics we know of today are produced naturally by a group of soil bacteria called Streptomyces. In work carried out initially at the John Innes Centre, Professor Mervyn Bibb from the Molecular Microbiology department and collaborator Dr Koji Yanai from a Japanse laboratory discovered 36 repeating copies of one gene cluster in a strain of Streptomyces that had been repeatedly selected to over-produce the antibiotic kanamycin. Based on this observation Prof Bibb and colleagues have developed a system for the targeted amplification of gene clusters which they believe will work for many other Streptomyces strains and antibiotics, and may also uncover new, undiscovered antibiotics by amplifying cryptic gene clusters in other Streptomyces species.

Read the full publication.

JIC student brings home new expertise to answer question in antibiotic resistance
August 2011
John Innes Centre researchers from the Molecular Microbiology department, Tung Le and Professor Mark Buttner (pictured, standing on right) working with Dr David Lawson (Biological Chemistry), have worked out the structure of a complex formed when a protein binds to DNA. This has proved to be key in understanding how an antibiotic-producing organism controls resistance to its own antibiotic, and may be an example of how other antibiotic producers regulate export to prevent self-toxicity.

"This provides a mechanism that couples the potentially lethal biosynthesis of the antibiotic to its export, which has wider implications for resistance to clinically important antibiotics," commented Prof. Buttner. "However, we needed to know more detail about the interaction between SimR and DNA."

The crystal structure of the TetR family transcriptional repressor SimR bound to DNA and the role of a flexible N-terminal extension in minor groove binding, Le, T.B.K., Schumacher, M.A., Lawson, D.M., Brennan, RG and Buttner, M.J. Nucleic Acids Research. Read the full publication.

Antibiotic production controls unravelled to help in clinical development
July 2011
Scientists from the Molecular Microbiology department, Professor Mervyn Bibb and Dr Lucy Foulston, researching a new antibiotic have pieced together the way it is produced by a soil bacterium by working out the functions of its genes. Microbisporicin is produced by a soil bacterium from Indonesia called Microbispora corallina. A clearer understanding of how microbisporicin's synthesis is regulated by the bacterium will provide the basis for finding ways of optimising its production and so become a new weapon in the fight against multi-drug resistant pathogens.

Lantibiotics are a class of antibiotics produced by bacteria, and microbisporicin represents a potent example of the class, which has so far been under-exploited for clinical use. That could now change, as preclinical trials are showing that it is highly active against a large range of bacteria. To aid its pharmaceutical development, Professor Mervyn Bibb and Dr Lucy Foulston at the John Innes Centre, identified the genes that Microbispora corallina uses to regulate microbisporicin production.

Feed-Forward Regulation of Microbisporicin Biosynthesis in Microbispora corallina, Foulston, L. and Bibb, M. Journal of Bacteriology, p. 3064-71, Vol. 193. Read the full publication.

John Innes Foundation Prizes for Excellence in Scientific Research and Excellence in Science Communication
July 2011
Four postgraduate research students from the Norwich Research Park have received awards from the John Innes Foundation for the excellence of their research and how well they communicate it.

One of the winners, Dr Lucy Foulston (pictured), formally of Prof Mervyn Bibb's lab, was awarded the JIF Prize for Excellence in Scientific Research in recognition of her excellent scientific research with a clear strategic impact.

Lucy Foulston's research on identifying and characterising the genes needed by a rare soil bacterium to make a potent antibiotic resulted in papers in PNAS and the Journal of Bacteriology, where it featured on the front cover. "It is such an honour to be given this award. My time at JIC was extremely rewarding both scientifically and personally," said Lucy.

Bridging the gap - JIC hosts South African biotechnology students
June 2011
Three research students from the University of Pretoria are currently visiting and working at the John Innes Centre in prominent biotechnology laboratories, learning the skills needed to work in this field.

Engineered bacterium is helping in the search for new antibiotics
March 2011
To help in the search for new antibiotics JIC scientists, Juan Pablo Gomez-Escribano and Professor Mervyn Bibb, have adapted a strain of Streptomyces coelicolor to express clusters of genes found from genome sequencing projects whose functions are unknown.

The strains are now being used by a number of different research groups. "We believe that these strains can make a major contribution to the discovery of novel natural products and may contribute significantly to addressing the urgent need for new antibiotics," said Prof Bibb.

Professor Sir David Hopwood receives the SGM Prize Medal Lecture Award
February 2011
Professor Sir David Hopwood is the recipient of the Society for General Microbiology Medal, awarded annually to a microbiologist of international standing whose work has led to a far-reaching impact beyond microbiology. David will deliver his talk, Streptomyces genomics: new routes to antibiotic discovery, on Monday 11th April at the SGM's Spring Conference at the Harrogate International Centre.
Read the full article here.
SGM Spring Conference 2011 Prize Lectures.

John Innes Centre sets up training links with Southern Africa
December 2010
The Biotechnology Young Entrepreneurs Scheme (YES) has proved to be a successful model for introducing young researchers at JIC to the world of business and entrepreneurship. Recently, a team of scientists from JIC has helped to establish something similar in Southern Africa.

The JIC scientists were Dr Michael McArthur, co-founder of Procarta Biosystems Ltd, a successful spin-out company from JIC science, Dr Lesley Boyd, JIC's International Research Manager for International Development, Eva Thuenemann, a PhD student who recently entered Biotechnology YES and Prof Nick Brewin.

Procarta secures major new investment to continue development of novel antibiotics
November 2010
Procarta, a spin-out company from John Innes Centre science, has secured up to £1.25million funding to continue the development of its novel DNA-based antibiotic technology to help combat drug-resistant infections.

Dr Michael McArthur, Procarta's scientific co-founder and CSO with Prof. Mervyn Bibb, commented: "Coming on the back of positive scientific results, this raise validates the Procarta's platform's promise to cope with the emerging threat of antibiotic resistance. We are thrilled to see this capital infusion which will allow us to drive all of our programmes forward and build on the early-stage interest expressed by major pharmaceutical companies."

Innovation and Innovators - Dr Michael McArthur
October 2010
Dr Michael McArthur, winner of the BBSRC's Most Promising Innovator of the Year Award, describes how his work at the John Innes Centre is now being successfully commercialised. Dr McArthur co-founded Procarta Biosystems with Prof. Mervyn Bibb to commercialize a new class of antibiotic to combat drug-resistant infections: transcription factor decoys (TFDs).

Dr Michael McArthur, Most Promising Innovator of the Year, collected £5,000 at the gala award ceremony at Canary Wharf, London.

The third John Innes-Rudjer Bošković Summer School in Applied Molecular Microbiology
September 2010
As part of the John Innes Centre's goal to equip the scientific leaders of the future, the third John Innes-Rudjer Bošković Summer School in Applied Molecular Microbiology was recently held, giving graduate students and post-docs from 18 countries the latest developments in the study of microbial metabolites.

Professor Sir David Hopwood, FRS, John Innes Emeritus Fellow, is co-director of the summer schools with Julian Davies of the University of British Columbia, and Mervyn Bibb and Govind Chandra of JIC are lecturers on the courses.

John Innes Foundation Student Prizes 2010
August 2010
The 2010 John Innes Foundation Student Prizes for Excellence in Science Communication have been awarded jointly to Giulia Morieri (Molecular Microbiology) and Colette Matthewman (Metabolic Biology).

Giulia Morieri, a member of Professor Allan Downie's lab, was awarded the prize for her considerable work in illustrating the science behind food security to both the scientific community and the lay public.

Key milestone towards the development of a new clinically useful antibiotic
July 2010
Scientists from the John Innes Centre have identified the genes necessary for making a highly potent and clinically unexploited antibiotic in the fight against multi-resistant pathogens.

"Lantibiotics are antibiotic molecules produced by soil bacteria, and we are studying probably the most potent one known, microbisporicin, which is active against many different pathogens," said Professor Mervyn Bibb, co-author on the paper to be published in PNAS.

The producing bacterium, Microbispora corallina, is difficult to work with. It grows very slowly and no tools existed for its genetic manipulation. PhD student Lucy Foulston developed the tools herself. She then took advantage of new developments in genome sequencing to identify and then isolate the M. corallina gene cluster responsible for microbisporicin production.

Lifeline for antibiotic of last resort
July 2010
An international team of scientists has uncovered how bacteria sense vancomycin, a mechanism that triggers resistance to this powerful antibiotic.

"Vancomycin resistance is thankfully still rare in MRSA, but if it became more widespread we could risk edging backwards to the pre-antibiotic era," says Professor Mark Buttner. "We need to have a back-up ready in case resistance becomes more common."

'A vancomycin photoprobe identifies the histidine kinase VanSsc as a vancomycin receptor' was published online in Nature Chemical Biology, 11 April 2010, doi 10.1038/NCHEMBIO.350

NRP Streptomyces 2010 - 16th April 2010
March 2010
The NRP Streptomyces Meeting 2010 is to take place on Friday 16th April, 9.30am - 5pm, at the Genome Centre Seminar Room, John Innes Centre. At this full day event, find out about current research on Streptomyces from across the Norwich Research Park, as well as from keynote speaker Dr Andrew Mearns-Spragg, CEO of Aquapharm Biodiscovery.
Registration for this event is required.

Speakers confirmed from this department are:
Antje Hempel - The control of apical growth and branching in Streptomyces.
Jane Moore - Epigenetic control of secondary metabolism.
Lucy Foulston - Microbisporicin; A lantibiotic with clinical potential.

New Head of Molecular Microbiology Department
January 2010
Acting Director of the John Innes Centre, Mike Bevan, was delighted to announce the appointment of Professor Ray Dixon FRS as the next Head of the Molecular Microbiology Department.
Mervyn Bibb has stepped down from this post to pursue his research and business development interests.