• Mervyn Bibb's Research

Related links

• AT JIC:
• Molecular Microbiology
• ON THE WEB:
• Streptomyces.org.uk
• Microbes in Norwich
• ScoCyc - metabolic pathways
• ScoDB - genome database
• Search PUBMED

Curriculum Vitae

• 1974 BSc University of East Anglia, UK
• 1978 Ph D University of East Anglia, UK
• 1978 Postdoctoral Fellow John Innes Centre, UK
• 1979 - 1982 Postdoctoral Fellow Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA
• 1983 - 2000 Project Leader John Innes Centre, UK
• 2000 - present Project Leader, Dept of Molecular Microbiology, John Innes Centre, UK
• 2001-2003 Senior Research Director, Diversa Corporation, San Diego, CA, USA
• 2004 - 2009 Head of Department, Dept of Molecular Microbiology, John Innes Centre, UK
• 1998 - present Honorary Professor, University of East Anglia, UK
• 2008 - present Honorary Professor, Imperial College, UK

Mervyn Bibb

Project Leader

Molecular Microbiology

Contact details

mervyn.bibb@jic.ac.uk

Research interests

• Regulation of secondary metabolism (antibiotic production) in streptomycetes

• Streptomyces functional genomics (transcriptome and proteome analysis)

• Lantibiotics of actinomycete origin

My major interest is the regulation of secondary metabolism, particularly antibiotic production, in Streptomyces coelicolor and Streptomyces venezuelae, and its growth phase-dependence. A variety of molecular and genetic techniques, including global transcriptome and proteome analysis, are being applied to analyse the expression of gene clusters encoding several of the secondary metabolites made by these strains.

The influence of growth rate, intracellular ppGpp and extracellular signalling molecules on the expression of pleiotropic and pathway-specific regulatory genes are studied to elucidate regulatory networks and the underlying mechanisms of signal transduction.

The recent sequencing of the complete genomes of several streptomycete species revealed the presence of a large number of "cryptic" secondary metabolic gene clusters, and led to the realisation that these organisms have the ability to produce many more natural products than had previously been recognised. One of the aims of this work is to identify the physiological signals and regulatory mechanisms responsible for the activation of these "cryptic" pathways, thus unleashing the full biosynthetic potential of these prodigious producers of valuable natural products.  These studies are now being extended to include other "rare" actinomycete species.

I am also interested in an unusual class of peptide antibiotics (lantibiotics) made by streptomycetes and other high G+C actinomycetes. Work is in progress to understand the biosynthesis of the lantibiotic cinnamycin made by Streptomyces cinnamoneus, to isolate gene clusters encoding novel lantibiotics, and to use recombinant approaches to generate novel peptides with valuable pharmaceutical and agricultural applications.

I recently served as Senior Research Director at Diversa Corporation in San Diego, where I directed the establishment of a small molecule discovery program based on the use of a proprietary streptomycete that was used to express heterologous secondary metabolic gene clusters.  Both micro-array and global proteome analyses were employed to improve this organism as an expression host for the production of small molecules.