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Victoria Burge a 3rd year PhD student working with Professor Paula Salgado in the Biosciences Institute at Newcastle University was recently awarded the Don Whitley Scientific Travel Grant and has kindly supplied the following overview of the work that was presented at the 13th International Conference on the Molecular Biology and Pathogenesis of Clostridia.
My name is Victoria Burge and I am a third year PhD student working with Professor Paula Salgado at Newcastle University. I was recently awarded the DWS Travel Grant to present a poster at the 13th International Conference on the Molecular Biology and Pathogenesis of Clostridia (ClostPath) in Banff, Canada 19-23 September 2023.
Our lab is interested in the opportunistic anaerobe C. difficile, responsible for most cases of hospital-acquired, antibiotic-associated diarrhoea. One unexplored therapeutic avenue is targeting C. difficile sporulation. My research focuses on the peptidoglycan hydrolases SpoIID and SpoIIP, required for remodelling the peptidoglycan during engulfment. Currently, my work involves investigating the metal requirements for both SpoIID and SpoIIP, as well as identifying novel binding sites by Fragment Screening.
ClostPath 2023 was a great opportunity to network and discuss my current data with international researchers within the Clostridia community, providing great benefit to both my future work and career development. It was great to listen to the advancements in Clostridia research and how Whitley Workstations have been pivotal to allow this to happen. I am grateful to Don Whitley Scientific for supporting my attendance at ClostPath and I’m looking forward to using the Whitley A35 Anaerobic Workstation to test the impact on C. difficile sporulation of mutating key binding site residues I’ve been identifying in my current work.
Thank you to Victoria and good luck with your future research!
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