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Professor Syma Khalid has received a prestigious Wellcome Discovery Award to support her research on the delivery mechanism of molecules within the protective envelopes that surround bacterial cells.
The £1 million+ grant will support a project over 5 years to investigate how molecules move within the protective envelopes surrounding bacterial cells, helping scientists better understand the sophisticated defence mechanisms that make disease-causing bacteria so difficult to combat.
Bacterial pathogens are responsible for a wide range of diseases affecting humans, animals and plants. Their complex protective structures present a significant challenge to the development of effective treatments.
Professor Syma Khalid is the Tutorial Fellow in Biochemistry at St Anne’s College. At the heart of her research is a fundamental question: is the movement and delivery of molecules within bacterial envelopes a carefully choreographed process, or does it occur through random molecular collisions?
The Wellcome Discovery Award will enable Professor Khalid and her team to use advanced computer modelling and molecular simulations to predict how molecules are transported within bacterial cells. The project will build on the pioneering Computational Microbiology approach developed by her research group, which enables scientists to simulate sections of bacteria in remarkable molecular detail.
By revealing the mechanisms that govern molecular movement within bacterial envelopes, the research could provide important new insights into bacterial defence systems and help identify innovative strategies for the design of future antibiotics.
The Wellcome Trust Discovery Award represents a significant investment in Professor Khalid’s research and its potential to contribute to addressing the growing challenge of bacterial infections.
Professor Khalid says: “It’s a truly exciting time to be doing simulations of bacterial cell envelopes. This grant will enable my team to harness cutting-edge simulation methods, High-Performance Computing resources and Machine Learning to work out some of the ways bacteria move molecules around within their cells.”