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Regulation of differentiation and antibiotic production in Streptomyces

Reference	BBS/E/J/00000015
Principal Investigator / Supervisor	Professor Mark Buttner
Co-Investigators / Co-Supervisors
Institution	John Innes Centre
Department	John Innes Centre Department
Funding type	Research
Value (£)	2,860,224
Status	Completed
Type	Institute Project
Start date	01/04/1997
End date	31/03/2017
Duration	240 months

Abstract

A major focus of my research group is the regulation of differentiation and antibiotic production in Streptomyces. Through the work of many labs, very significant progress is being made in understanding the cell biological processes underlying morphogenesis in Streptomyces, and all of the bld and whi developmental master regulators defined by classical mutant hunts have been cloned and characterised. A major challenge for my lab now is to connect the developmental cell biological processes to these master regulators by dissecting the regulatory networks that link the two. Further, Streptomyces are the most abundant source of clinically important antibiotics and other bioactive molecules, and the production of these antibiotics is temporally and genetically coordinated with the developmental programme. Thus, in addition to causing loss of aerial mycelium formation, mutations in many bld loci also block antibiotic production, and so this research is also shedding light on the pleiotropic control of antibiotic production. To make this research possible, we have recently been pioneering a newly sequenced species, Streptomyces venezuelae, as a developmental system. In the traditional model system, Streptomyces coelicolor, differentiation occurs on solid medium but not in liquid culture and the differentiating part of the colony (the aerial mycelium) constitutes only ~5% of the total biomass. In contrast, S. venezuelae sporulates to completion in liquid culture, making it possible for the first time to apply successfully ChIP-on-chip, microarray transcriptional profiling and other global techniques to the analysis of Streptomyces development.

Summary

unavailable

Committee	Not funded via Committee
Research Topics	Microbiology
Research Priority	X – Research Priority information not available
Research Initiative	X - not in an Initiative
Funding Scheme	X – not Funded via a specific Funding Scheme

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