Project description:Rapid evaporative ionisation mass spectrometry (REIMS) is a novel technique for the real-time analysis of biological material. It works by conducting an electrical current through a sample, causing it to rapidly heat and evaporate, with the analyte containing vapour channelled to a mass spectrometer. It was used to characterise the metabolome of 45 Pseudomonas aeruginosa (P. aeruginosa) isolates from cystic fibrosis (CF) patients and compared to 80 non-CF P. aeruginosa. Phospholipids gave the highest signal intensity; 17 rhamnolipids and 18 quorum sensing molecules were detected, demonstrating that REIMS has potential for the study of virulence-related metabolites. P. aeruginosa isolates obtained from respiratory samples showed a higher diversity, which was attributed to the chronic nature of most respiratory infections. The analytical sensitivity of REIMS allowed the detection of a metabolome that could be used to classify individual P. aeruginosa isolates after repeated culturing with 81% accuracy, and an average 83% concordance with multilocus sequence typing. This study underpins the capacities of REIMS as a tool with clinical applications, such as metabolic phenotyping of the important CF pathogen P. aeruginosa, and highlights the potential of metabolic fingerprinting for fine scale characterisation at a sub-species level.
Project description:Hybridisation of reference strains to the VirEp Staphylococcus aureus microarray, and characterisation of different S. aureus isolates from different locations and associated with different diseases.
Project description:Prior studies of Bangladeshi migrants in the UK revealed that reproductive function is adaptive, responding to different environments during childhood by adjusting the timing of puberty, reproductive lifespan and overall reproductive function. Here we aimed to understand the basis of this plasticity. Our goals were to establish whether epigenetic mechanisms play a role in the plasticity of this adaptive reproductive phenotype. We hypothesized that women growing up in Bangladesh would have distinct DNA methylation signatures compared to those who moved to the UK at a young age or were born to Bangladeshi parents in the UK. Some of these environmentally induced epigenetic differences would be detected in buccal cell DNA and reflect the divergent gene expression responsible for the altered reproductive function. The women of the study who grew up in Bangladesh were relatively affluent, well-nourished and rarely performed manual work, but a significant confounding factor in their early life was the level of disease load presenting a chronic immune challenge
Project description:Comaprision of P.falciparum clinical isolates showing Uncomplicated disease with that shwoing complicated disease(Cerebral malaria) The experiment was designed to try and identify differences if any, at the genome level between P.falciparum isolates from patients with uncomplicated malaria vs. patients with complicated malaria (Cerebral malaria). The emphasis was to highlight possible amplifications/deletions in different regions of the parasite genome.
Project description:Livestock-associated methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus (LA-MRSA) CC398 isolated from UK animals belong to European lineages
Project description:Comparative genomic hybridization between Escherichia coli strains to determine core and pan genome content of clinical and environmental isolates
