Josephine Giard

Biography

Project Title

Exploiting Bacterial Metagenomics Data for the Discovery of Novel Antibiotics

Abstract

I am investigating soil metagenomics data in a view of exploiting biosynthetic gene clusters for novel antibiotic discovery. This is because the World Health Organization has identified increasing levels of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) as a major global challenge and one of the ways to tackle AMR, is to keep discovering novel metabolites with antimicrobial activity that may find applications in medicine. Streptomyces have traditionally been exploited to provide novel compounds to tackle the shortage in new drug discovery. Streptomyces are primarily soil-dwelling, filamentous bacteria that produce around two-thirds of all commercially important antibiotics. During my project will work within the Heriot-Watt microbiology group including full training in bacterial molecular genetics and bioinformatics analysis. In addition, I will undertake part of my project in the Lyell Centre.

Contact

Email: jmg2001@hw.ac.uk