Synthetic and fundamental approaches involving EnvZ to combat antimicrobial resistance

In this research seminar Dr Roger Draheim will discuss his research on "Synthetic and fundamental approaches involving EnvZ to combat antimicrobial resistance".

The long-term goal of this research is to identify small molecule pharmaceuticals that specifically interact with EnvZ or those that prevent EnvZ-MzrA interaction. These could be employed to alter porin balance in order to facilitate more favourable antibacterial passage across the outer membrane. Therefore, to initially generate a more complete understanding of porin regulation by EnvZ-containing porin regulatory complexes (PRCs), three overarching aims have been proposed.

The overall aim is to develop a biological-based platform to screen pre-existing molecular libraries for compounds that alter stimulus-perception or signal output from bacterial two-component circuits. Optimising screening with this platform will require a broad range of techniques including molecular biological, protein-based, fluorescence-based, high-throughput and synthetic biological.

Dr Roger Draheim is a Senior Lecturer in Microbiology at the School of Pharmacy and Biomedical Sciences, University of Portsmouth. His research areas cover employing synthetic microbiology, biochemistry and biophysics, and his research group pursues two narrative lines: employing aromatic tuning to modulate signal output from two-component signalling circuits in a stimulus-independent manner, and molecular characterisation of the EnvZ-MzrA porin-regulatory complexes (PRCs).