Colin Hughes PhD ScD FLSW (born 14 March 1953) is a British microbiologist who has worked in the areas of bacterial virulence, motility and antibiotic resistance. He is Emeritus Professor of Microbiology at the University of Cambridge, Fellow of Trinity College Cambridge, and Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales. [1] [2] [3]
Hughes was born and raised in North Wales. His parents were May Hughes (née Roberts) and Joseph Hughes, a textile worker. He was educated at Holywell Grammar School, which during his time there changed to the comprehensive school Holywell High School. He studied Natural Sciences at the University of Kent, Canterbury (1971–74), where, from 1974 to 1977, he also undertook research on plasmid-bearing enterobacteria for a PhD under the supervision of Professor G.G.Meynell. [4] [5]
He trained in three post-doctoral posts: at the Sandoz Research Institute Vienna (1977–80), at the University of Würzburg with Professor Werner Goebel (1980–83), and at the Smith Kline Research Institute in Philadelphia (1884). In 1985, he became Lecturer in Microbiology at the University of Cambridge Department of Pathology where he established research into the molecular biology of pathogenic bacteria. His subsequent work focused on cellular mechanisms underlying toxin biogenesis and export, [6] [7] [8] [9] flagellum assembly [10] [11] [12] and multidrug resistance. [13] [14] [15] [16] [17] [18] He has published over 120 research articles, listed on Google Scholar. [19]
He was awarded a Readership in Microbiology in 1996 and in 2001 was promoted to Professor of Microbiology. In 2000 he received the Doctor of Science degree from the University of Cambridge. He was elected Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge in 1997, and in 2012 he became Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales (FLSW).
From 1985 to 2018, Hughes taught the University's Natural, Medical and Veterinary Science students in the Department of Pathology, where he became Director of Teaching (2011–17), and he was Director of Studies in Medical Sciences at Trinity College, Cambridge from 1997 to 2017. He was Head of the Department of Pathology's Division of Microbiology and Parasitology from 1998 to 2017, and Deputy Head of the Department from 2011 to 2017.
The Korarchaeota is a proposed phylum within the Archaea. The name is derived from the Greek noun koros or kore, meaning young man or young woman, and the Greek adjective archaios which means ancient. They are also known as Xenarchaeota. The name is equivalent to Candidatus Korarchaeota, and they go by the name Xenarchaeota or Xenarchaea as well.
FtsZ is a protein encoded by the ftsZ gene that assembles into a ring at the future site of bacterial cell division. FtsZ is a prokaryotic homologue of the eukaryotic protein tubulin. The initials FtsZ mean "Filamenting temperature-sensitive mutant Z." The hypothesis was that cell division mutants of E. coli would grow as filaments due to the inability of the daughter cells to separate from one another. FtsZ is found in almost all bacteria, many archaea, all chloroplasts and some mitochondria, where it is essential for cell division. FtsZ assembles the cytoskeletal scaffold of the Z ring that, along with additional proteins, constricts to divide the cell in two.
Secretion is the movement of material from one point to another, such as a secreted chemical substance from a cell or gland. In contrast, excretion is the removal of certain substances or waste products from a cell or organism. The classical mechanism of cell secretion is via secretory portals at the plasma membrane called porosomes. Porosomes are permanent cup-shaped lipoprotein structures embedded in the cell membrane, where secretory vesicles transiently dock and fuse to release intra-vesicular contents from the cell.
Filamentation is the anomalous growth of certain bacteria, such as Escherichia coli, in which cells continue to elongate but do not divide. The cells that result from elongation without division have multiple chromosomal copies.
An efflux pump is an active transporter in cells that moves out unwanted material. Efflux pumps are an important component in bacteria in their ability to remove antibiotics. The efflux could also be the movement of heavy metals, organic pollutants, plant-produced compounds, quorum sensing signals, bacterial metabolites and neurotransmitters. All microorganisms, with a few exceptions, have highly conserved DNA sequences in their genome that encode efflux pumps. Efflux pumps actively move substances out of a microorganism, in a process known as active efflux, which is a vital part of xenobiotic metabolism. This active efflux mechanism is responsible for various types of resistance to bacterial pathogens within bacterial species - the most concerning being antibiotic resistance because microorganisms can have adapted efflux pumps to divert toxins out of the cytoplasm and into extracellular media.
Geoffrey Chang is a professor at the University of California, San Diego's Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences and Department of Pharmacology, School of Medicine. His laboratory focuses on the structural biology of integral membrane proteins, particularly exploring X-ray crystallography techniques for solving the tertiary structures of membrane proteins that are notoriously resistant to crystallization. The laboratory has specialized in structures of multidrug resistance transporter proteins in bacteria. In 2001, while a faculty member of The Scripps Research Institute, Chang was awarded a Beckman Young Investigators Award, designed to support researchers early in their academic careers, for his work on the structural biology of multidrug resistance. Chang announced a move from Scripps to neighboring UC San Diego in 2012.
Lysins, also known as endolysins or murein hydrolases, are hydrolytic enzymes produced by bacteriophages in order to cleave the host's cell wall during the final stage of the lytic cycle. Lysins are highly evolved enzymes that are able to target one of the five bonds in peptidoglycan (murein), the main component of bacterial cell walls, which allows the release of progeny virions from the lysed cell. Cell-wall-containing Archaea are also lysed by specialized pseudomurein-cleaving lysins, while most archaeal viruses employ alternative mechanisms. Similarly, not all bacteriophages synthesize lysins: some small single-stranded DNA and RNA phages produce membrane proteins that activate the host's autolytic mechanisms such as autolysins.
Swarming motility is a rapid and coordinated translocation of a bacterial population across solid or semi-solid surfaces, and is an example of bacterial multicellularity and swarm behaviour. Swarming motility was first reported by Jorgen Henrichsen and has been mostly studied in genus Serratia, Salmonella, Aeromonas, Bacillus, Yersinia, Pseudomonas, Proteus, Vibrio and Escherichia.
Multidrug and toxin extrusion protein 1 (MATE1), also known as solute carrier family 47 member 1, is a protein that in humans is encoded by the SLC47A1 gene. SLC47A1 belongs to the MATE family of transporters that are found in bacteria, archaea and eukaryotes.
Multidrug and toxin extrusion protein 2 is a protein which in humans is encoded by the SLC47A2 gene.
Michael M. Gottesman is an American biochemist and physician-scientist. He was the deputy director (Intramural) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in the United States, and also Chief of the Laboratory of Cell Biology at the National Cancer Institute (NCI) within the NIH.
The CTXφ bacteriophage is a filamentous bacteriophage. It is a positive-strand DNA virus with single-stranded DNA (ssDNA).
The gene rpoN encodes the sigma factor sigma-54, a protein in Escherichia coli and other species of bacteria. RpoN antagonizes RpoS sigma factors.
Everett Peter Greenberg is an American microbiologist. He is the inaugural Eugene and Martha Nester Professor of Microbiology at the Department of Microbiology of the University of Washington School of Medicine. He is best known for his research on quorum sensing, and has received multiple awards for his work.
The multidrug/oligosaccharidyl-lipid/polysaccharide (MOP) flippase superfamily is a group of integral membrane protein families. The MOP flippase superfamily includes twelve distantly related families, six for which functional data are available:
The Monovalent Cation:Proton Antiporter-2 (CPA2) Family is a moderately large family of transporters belonging to the CPA superfamily. Members of the CPA2 family have been found in bacteria, archaea and eukaryotes. The proteins of the CPA2 family consist of between 333 and 900 amino acyl residues and exhibit 10-14 transmembrane α-helical spanners (TMSs).
Resistance-nodulation-division (RND) family transporters are a category of bacterial efflux pumps, especially identified in Gram-negative bacteria and located in the cytoplasmic membrane, that actively transport substrates. The RND superfamily includes seven families: the heavy metal efflux (HME), the hydrophobe/amphiphile efflux-1, the nodulation factor exporter family (NFE), the SecDF protein-secretion accessory protein family, the hydrophobe/amphiphile efflux-2 family, the eukaryotic sterol homeostasis family, and the hydrophobe/amphiphile efflux-3 family. These RND systems are involved in maintaining homeostasis of the cell, removal of toxic compounds, and export of virulence determinants. They have a broad substrate spectrum and can lead to the diminished activity of unrelated drug classes if over-expressed. The first reports of drug resistant bacterial infections were reported in the 1940s after the first mass production of antibiotics. Most of the RND superfamily transport systems are made of large polypeptide chains. RND proteins exist primarily in gram-negative bacteria but can also be found in gram-positive bacteria, archaea, and eukaryotes.
David Schlessinger is a Canadian-born American biochemist, microbiologist, and geneticist. He is known for his directorship of the development of the map of the X chromosome.
Orville Wyss was an American microbiologist. He was the president of the American Society for Microbiology in 1965.
Melvin Isaac Simon is an American molecular biologist, molecular geneticist, and microbiologist.