For example, the heat tolerance of endospores depends on multiple factors such as sporulation temperature, core dehydration, and the presence of minerals and small, acid-soluble proteins (SASPs) in the core. A bacterial endospore is a metabolically dormant form of life that is much more resistant to heat, desiccation, lack of nutrients, exposure to UV and gamma radiation, organic chemicals, and oxidizing agents than is a vegetative cell. Quantitative image analysis (e.g.The ubiquity of Bacilli endospores in soils facilitates their easy transfer routes to other environments, including cleanrooms and low-biomass sites required by many industries such as food production and processing.Techniques that will be undertaken during the project: What are the metabolic circuits that control spore dormancy?īased on previous work and unpublished results, we are interested in the function of a poorly characterized secretion system and how it contributes to spore metabolism.īBSRC Strategic Research Priority: Understanding the Rules of Life:Microbiology.Our goal is to develop a new model and tools for studying sporulation directly in a host setting. We are particularly interested in the sporulation program of Paenibacillus larvae, which causes American foulbrood disease in honey bee larvae. How do spore-forming pathogens grow, sporulate and cause disease in their hosts?.How do conserved sporulation genes function during spore development?īuilding on our existing work, we are particularly interested in investigating the assembly of the spore envelope with a strong focus on the spore cell wall and its relationship to other processes during development, in Bacillus subtilis and Clostridioides difficile.PhD projects exploring the following questions, using the human pathogen Clostridioides difficile, the honey-bee pathogen Paenibacillus larvae or model organism Bacillus subtilis, in collaboration with other laboratories (Munehiro Asally and Meera Unnikrishnan, depending on the project), are available for consideration by enthusiastic students. Thus, it is important to investigate sporulation in understudied bacteria and in the host context.ĭespite decades of research, important questions regarding spore molecular biology and physiology remain to be solved and are the focus of the Rodrigues Laboratory ( Rodrigues Lab). Importantly, although bacterial sporulation is restricted to a single phylum, there are likely to be many variations at a mechanistic level, particularly if we consider how spore-forming bacteria grow and sporulate inside hosts and the likely molecular mechanisms that tie host physiology to growth and sporulation. Given the lack of antibiotics specifically targeting sporulation, the prevalence of spore-forming pathogens in hospitals worldwide and existence of spore-forming pathogens that cause disease in pollinator insects (honey bees), understanding sporulation is important as a mean to provide a platform for translational opportunities controlling spore-forming bacteria. For this reason, spores are considered the vehicle of new and recurring infections in humans, animals and insects, and can contaminate food sources. Their dormant nature and resistance to these stressors allows them to persist in the environment for extended periods of time and when nutrients become available, spores emerge from dormancy to generate growing populations of bacteria. Importantly, spore resist stresses including: antibiotics, detergents, UV radiation and high temperatures. Furthermore, the various morphogenetic processes that underlie sporulation have made it a sophisticated model for understanding molecular mechanisms in bacterial biology. Its primordial nature has allowed it to serve as an excellent model system for understanding broadly relevant molecular aspects of cellular developmental.

Spore development or sporulation is one of the earliest forms of cellular development on Earth and functions as a survival strategy against starvation.

University of Registration: University of Warwick PhD project title: Spore formation in model and pathogenic bacteria Secondary supervisor: Associate Professor Meera Unnikrishan & Associate Professor Munehiro Asally Primary Supervisor: Associate Professor Christopher Rodrigues, School of Life Sciences