Biography: Dr. Ariel J. Blocker obtained a 1^st class Honours degree in Genetics from University College London in 1991 and a PhD in Cell Biology from The European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Heidelberg, Germany, in 1995.

As a postdoctoral fellow in Prof. Philippe Sansonetti’s laboratory at the Pasteur Institute in Paris (1996-2000), she visually identified and purified the type III secretion system (T3SS) of Shigella, the agent of bacillary dysentery in humans. She found they are composed of an external and hollow needle, a "base" region spanning both bacterial membranes and a cytoplasmic "bulb". She performed some of the first studies of the T3SS translocon, the bacterial pore inserted by the T3SS into the host cell membrane to allow effector translocation. As the Guy G. F. Newton (co-discoverer of cephalosporins, along with Sir Edward P. Abraham) Senior Research Fellow (junior PI) at the Sir William Dunn School of Pathology in Oxford (2001-2007) she demonstrated that the external "injection needle" subunit of the Shigella T3SS packs with the same helical symmetry as that of the bacterial flagellar hook and filament, to which it is evolutionarily but not sequence related. Her team found mutations within the needle component of the apparatus that lock the T3SS into secretion different "on" or "off" states, indicating that it is directly involved in transducing the host cell sensing signal. They discovered that these mutant needles also carry distal "tip complexes" of differing composition and functionality. After she moved to the University of Bristol (2008), where she is now a Reader in Microbiology (2011-), her group performed a detailed structural and functional analysis of the tip complex, which showed it is the T3SS’s host-cell sensor. They also established that the host cell activation signal travels downwards from the tip complex via the needle to a conserved intrabacterial regulator. Since 2015, when Dr. Blocker received a Wellcome Trust Investigator Award, her group has focused its attention on the T3SS’s cytoplasmic and inner membrane export apparatus, trying to understand how it functions given its intriguing structure. They also developed a new research project focused on understanding and preventing persistence/chronicity/recurrence of Staphylococcus aureus infections.

From October 2017, Dr. Blocker will become the Senior Microbiologist within Sanofi’s R&D Infectious Diseases Therapeutic Area, located at Marcy-l’Étoile near Lyon, France. Her new team will be responsible for the discovery and early commercial development of antibiotics with new mechanisms of action against Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria.