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Seminar: What controls the localization of cell wall synthesis in Staphylococcus aureus? Professor Mariana Pinho, Instituto de Tecnologia Química e Biológica

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Location: MBU, Warwick Medical School

Abstract: Survival of most bacteria depends on their ability to synthesize a robust cell wall to interface with the external milieu. Peptidoglycan (PG), the major component of the bacterial wall, is a macromolecule that envelops the cell in a tough but flexible mesh-like structure that can bear the mechanical stress resulting from high intracellular turgor. Coccoid bacteria like Staphylococcus aureus possess one protein machinery dedicated to PG synthesis, which has to be diverted from the periphery of the cell to the septum in preparation for division. The molecular cue that coordinates this transition has remained elusive.

We have investigated the localization of most proteins involved in PG biosynthesis in S. aureus. Our findings demonstrate an elegant mechanism by which the timely recruitment of a single protein to a precise location in the cell shifts the localization of PG synthesis.

Mariana Gomes de Pinho

Biography: Mariana Gomes de Pinho studied Applied Chemistry at the Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia, Universidade Nova de Lisboa. She started her research career studying mechanisms of antibiotic resistance, in the Laboratory of Prof Hermínia de Lencastre, at the Instituto de Tecnologia Química e Biológica, Oeiras.

She continued these studies with Prof. Hermínia de Lencastre during her PhD, for which she moved, in 1997, to the Laboratory of Prof Alexander Tomasz at The Rockefeller University, in New York. In 2001 she became interested in understanding where and how bacterial proteins localize and joined the Laboratory of Prof Jeff Errington in the University of Oxford, UK, to work on this subject.

After 8 years abroad she decided to return to Portugal and in 2006 started her own research group, the Bacterial Cell Biology Laboratory, at the Instituto de Tecnologia Química e Biologia. She is currently the mother of three girls, aged 11, 8 and 3 years old, and is happy to combine her roles as scientist and mother.

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