James Linton

Overview

The coupling of sugars to cellular proteins, known as protein glycosylation, is common in complex organisms but much rarer in bacteria. However in a specific group of bacteria including the species that is the most common cause of human food poisoning, Campylobacter jejuni, sugars are used to modify many of the proteins at the bacterial surface to produce so-called glycoproteins. In our laboratory we are characterizing the molecular details of these bacterial protein glycosylation processes. This is important as we do not know why these bacteria glycosylate their proteins but it is likely to be involved in their ability to cause human and veterinary disease. Also these simple protein glycosylation systems can be used to make glycoproteins that could be used in medicine as drugs or vaccines.

Biography

Dennis Linton is Lecturer in the Faculty of Life Sciences within the Molecular Microbiology research theme. http://www.ls.manchester.ac.uk/research/themes/microbiology/.

Dennis graduated with a BSc in Microbiology (1988) from the University of East Anglia and subsequently worked as a Clinical Scientist within the Health Protection Agency in London. He completed his PhD (1997) on the characterisation of novel Campylobacter and Helicobacter species and joined Professor Brendan Wren''s group based at St. Bartholomews Hospital in London as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow working on Campylobacter jejuni. A second postdoctoral position in Professor Wren''s group at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine led to the award of a Wellcome Trust Career Development Fellowship in 2003 taken up at the University of Manchester.