Timeline
Beth talks about using technology for effective teaching
Our last preprint on ribosome profiling is now available at bioRxiv
We have further addressed translational regulatory mechanisms that may ensure the adaptation and survival of M. tuberculosis in the host by performing the first ribosome profiling experiment in the virulent strain H37Rv.
Check out the preprint here!
Farewell to Anna
We wish Anna the best of luck in her new position.
Thanks for your hard work and commitment, we will miss you!
Great collaborative work on antibiotic resistance evasion in M. tuberculosis just published in Nature Communications
Very happy to see this great work led by Luiz Pedro Carvalho from the Francis Crick Institute finally out.
Getting to the bottom as to why there are almost no recorded cases of tuberculosis becoming resistant to the antibiotic D-Cycloserine.
New collaborative paper on transcriptomic profiling of MTB lineages just published in Nature Communications
So happy to see this work co-led with Iñaki Comas from the IBV-CSIC in Spain finally out in Nature Communications.
Integration of transcriptomes and methylomes from MTB lineages reveals that creation of new transcriptional start sites due to single points mutations is shaping the transcriptional landscape within the MTB complex.
Anna and Beth attend the European Society of Mycobacteriology Congress
From 30th June to 3rd July 2019, Anna and Beth attended the European Society of Mycobacteriology in Valencia, Spain.
Anna described her work, Adaptation through diversity, in an oral presentation, whilst Beth presented a poster entitled, Exploring mechanisms of translation in the human pathogen, Mycobacterium tuberculosis
Beth attends Ribosome 2019
In January 2019, Beth travelled to Mexico to attend the Ribosome Structure and Function 2019, where she presented a poster
Our review about translational regulation in mycobacteria is out in Nucleic Acids Research
In this Review, we highlight important differences in the translational machinery of M. tuberculosis compared with E. coli, and also consider the role of leaderless translation in the ability of M. tuberculosis to establish latent infection and look at the experimental evidence that translational regulatory mechanisms operate in mycobacteria during stress adaptation.
https://academic.oup.com/nar/advance-article/doi/10.1093/nar/gky574/5045644
Invited speaker at the Changing views of translation, Royal Society meeting
I have been invited to speak at the Royal Society Meeting: Changing views of translation. I will be talking about Translational control of adaptive responses in Mycobacteria. I can’t wait!
Beth Sawyer brings science to the #BriSciFest2018
Beth and a team of volunteers from UCL, Reading and LSHTM took science to the streets of Brighton this weekend with a hands-on activity about the role of scientists in sport at #BriSciFest2018.
“To coincide with the Winter Olympics, we ran a stall about the science behind performance-enhancing drugs: what they are, their effects, side-effects and how they are detected. Over 200 people visited the stall and worked through the activities to catch the #dirtydopers. Thanks to the @BiochemSoc and @RoyalSocBio for funding and the opportunity to get involved in promoting molecular bioscience in this way.”
PhD studentship available
PhD studentship available within the MRC London Intercollegiate Doctoral Training Partnership (MRC LID) between The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) and St. George’s University of London (SGUL)
The PhD Project title is “Using functional genomics to understand the manipulation of host cell responses during Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection” and will be supervised by Dr. Axel Nohturfft (primary supervisor – SGUL), Prof. Steve Goodbourn (SGUL) and Dr. Teresa Cortes (LSHTM). Deadline for applications is on Sunday 14th January.
More information about the project and application process can be found here
Beth Sawyer gets the LSHTM small grant scheme in public engagement
Congratulations to Beth for securing funding for her public engagement project ” Secret Agents 005“!
In collaboration with scientists from UCL, she will take science to the streets to inspire primary school children that careers in science are fun and within their reach.
New paper out in Scientific Reports
Our work ” Delayed effects of transcriptional responses in Mycobacterium tuberculosis exposed to nitric oxide suggest other mechanisms involved in survival” has been published in Scientific Reports.
We have challenged M. tuberculosis with nitric oxide and interrogated the dynamic transcriptome and proteome response through time resolved analysis. Our findings suggest that whilst the early transcriptome changes might contribute to late-stage recovery, the initial resistance and survival of M. tuberculosis to nitric oxide is contingent on mechanisms other than transcriptional regulation.
You can find out more and access the full-text here.
Translation UK 2017
From the 6th to the 7th of July, Beth and I attended the Translation UK meeting in Nottingham.
Beth presented her work on ribosome profiling 
EMBO Tuberculosis Conference 2016
From 19th to 23rd September, we all attended the EMBO Tuberculosis Conference at the Pasteur Institute in Paris.
Anna presented a poster summarising her work on translational reporters
Postdoctoral position available
A postdoctoral research fellow position is now available in my group. Find out more at LSHTM Jobs.
Research Assistant position available
A Research Assistant position is now available in my research group. Vacancy details available at LSHTM Jobs. Please, contact me directly with any queries.
TB bacteria missing genetic signposts for proteins during latent infection
We have applied genome-wide mapping of transcriptional start sites combined with RNA sequencing and Shotgun proteomics in the human pathogen Mycobacterium tuberculosis, and discovered that more than a quarter of the bacterial genes are lacking the canonical bacterial signal for translation initiation. This could have important implications in the way translation is regulated in this pathogen, in particular during latent infection.
Read more about this story at the Francis Crick Institute news page here