51³Ô¹ÏÍø

The MRC Centre for Molecular Bacteriology and Infection is pleased to welcome three new members to its team of Principal Investigators.

Dr Tom Clarke was awarded his PhD from the University of Warwick in 2008, for work focused on understanding the biosynthesis of bacterial cell wall peptidoglycan. He then went on to do postdoctoral training at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, in the lab of Jeff Weiser. At Penn, he retained an interest in the bacterial cell wall, but shifted his attention on to how the innate immune system recognises the cell wall of both pathogenic and commensal bacteria. This work was published in Nature Medicine, Cell Host & Microbe, the Journal of Clinical Investigation and Immunological Reviews. Tom joined the CMBI in September 2013 and plans to investigate how commensal bacteria in the intestine enhance host defenses to infection by pathogenic bacteria.

completed her PhD in December 2006 at the Necker Hospital in Paris studying Type IV pili biology and the adhesion of Neisseria meningitidis to human cells under the supervision of Dr Vladimir Pelicic. She then moved to 51³Ô¹ÏÍø to a post-doctoral position with Professor David Holden, where she studied the intracellular replication of Salmonella Typhimurium in host macrophages. During that time, she developed a Fluorescence Dilution method, which enables the bacterial proliferation to be directly monitored at the single cell level. This method allowed her to observe the formation of an important population of Salmonella surviving within the macrophages without replicating. In 2012 Sophie was awarded an IC Junior Research Fellowship. She is now starting her own research group in the CMBI and research in her laboratory focuses on functional studies of Salmonella Toxin/Antitoxin modules and the physiology of intracellular non-growing bacteria.

obtained an integrated Masters/PhD degree from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India, where his doctoral studies on 3’,5’-cyclic-AMP signalling provided a fresh perspective on second messenger signalling in mycobacterial physiology and virulence. For postdoctoral studies, he worked with John MacMicking, at the Dept. of Microbial Pathogenesis, Yale University, USA, where he explored innate immunity against microbial infections. Here, Avinash became interested in the guanylate binding proteins (GBPs) which are member of the superfamily of IFN inducible GTPases, and integral to cell-autonomous protection against intracellular bacteria. His studies also uncovered GBP5 as a novel, selective regulator of antimicrobial inflammasomes during infection. As a Lecturer in Molecular Microbiology at the MRC CMBI, Avinash plans to use his experience in microbiology and innate immunity to study molecular signalling that underlies the host-microbe dialogue. In particular, his laboratory will focus on effector mechanisms mobilised by emerging inflammasome/caspase pathways to obtain a holistic picture of mammalian antimicrobial defences.