Dr Jack Bryant, University of Nottingham

Dr Jack Bryant

Title: Dissecting Gram-negative envelope biogenesis using high-throughput genetics approaches
Abstract: At this research seminar I will give an introduction to my background and present the scientific direction of my laboratory in investigating Gram-negative bacterial envelope biogenesis. I will give two examples of how we used arrayed and pooled mutant libraries to investigate cell envelope biogenesis in Escherichia coli. First, I will present how we used phenotypic screening of an arrayed library to identify genes that are important for maintenance of the outer membrane permeability barrier to antibiotics. Through structural, biochemical and molecular biology approaches we characterised two proteins that are important for envelope biogenesis: DolP and BepA. Second, I will share how we used Transposon Directed Insertion site Sequencing (TraDIS) to uncover that Bam complex associated proteins in Escherichia coli are functionally linked to membrane fluidity, peptidoglycan biosynthesis and DNA replication control.