SOS - Stressed Out Streptomyces: identifying the molecular mechanism that allows bacteria to survive DNA damage

DNA damage can have lethal consequences for all kind of cells, and it can also be the source for the emergence of drug resistance in bacterial pathogens. It is therefore important to understand the molecular mechanisms that allow bacteria to survive DNA stress.

This project will focus on elucidating how Streptomyces bacteria coordinate DNA repair with cell division. Streptomyces bacteria are filamentous growing bacteria that produce many important antibiotics. Importantly, the production of these valuable molecules is tightly coordinated with the cell cycle. To better understand how the cell cycle is controlled in response to DNA damage, we have recently determined the regulatory network that underpins the highly conserved SOS DNA damage response in Streptomyces (xxx). Excitingly, we identified a novel cell division inhibitor that arrests the Streptomyces cell cycle until the genome integrity is restored. This project aims to characterise the role of this new cell division inhibitor and to determine the molecular details of the DNA damage induced checkpoint mechanism.

The project comes with a multidisciplinary training, including molecular microbiology, fluorescence microscopy, RNA-seq, protein-protein interaction studies and structural biology. This will provide you highly transferrable skills and a wide choice of career options.

You will be based in the laboratory of Dr Susan Schlimpert in the Department of Molecular Microbiology at the John Innes Centre, which is a world-class institute for microbial research and in particular Streptomyces biology.