News

Dr Nick Jakubovics recently wrote a commentary on Andrew Turner’s paper on the link between Mn/Fe homeostasis and oxidative stress defence in Group A Streptococcus. The commentary can be found here.

Karrera recently contributed a blog post entitled “The Metal Matters” on WeTalkScience.com, where she described her journey (so far) in studying copper biology. She also doodled the illustrations herself!

This is shaping up to be an amazing 2019! We have been awarded a Springboard Award by the Academy of Medical Sciences and the Wellcome Trust to investigate the action of host-derived effectors of nutritional immunity. Although we have declined to accept the award because of overlap with our Wellcome Trust Seed Award, we are very grateful for the vote of confidence by the peer reviewers and panel members.

Many congratulations and hoorays to our MBiol student Jack, who has been awarded a highly competitive BBSRC DTP Studentship to stay on in the lab as a PhD student come October! Jack will be studying copper trafficking to enzymes that are involved in denitrification and microaerobic respiration.

Karrera visited Dr Louise Horsfall at the University of Edinburgh and delivered a seminar at the School of Biological Sciences about copper homeostasis in bacteria. She also met with Dr Edward Wallace. It was a fantastic visit with plenty of interesting discussions about metals!

Our review article about the handling of nutrient copper in the bacterial envelope has been highlighted as a Metallomics HOT Article in 2019. This themed collection features articles marked as HOT by the handling editor or as recommended by referees. Congratulations, Louisa and Denis!

Karrera recently provided comments to the Australian media regarding the antibacterial potency of copper surfaces via “contact killing”. The article is here. For more information about metallic copper as an antibacterial surface, read this review by Grass, Rensing, and Solioz.

Karrera’s profile in the Metallomics Emerging Investigators issue is now live! Very pleased to be highlighted alongside our close collaborator Dr Kevin Waldron (Newcastle University) and 15 other international early-career principal investigators in Metals in Biology.

Andrew Turner’s (UQ) last paper from his PhD has now been published in Biochemical Journal. Congratulations, Andrew, as well as the Walker and McEwan labs in Australia!