CANS seminar: Antibiofilm peptides and antibiotic production in Streptomyces
CANS seminar with Clarissa Czekster, University of St Andrews (UK) and Daniel Rozen, Leiden University (NL).
Clarissa Melo Czekster:
Engineering Species-Selective Antibiofilm Peptides Through Bacterial Aminopeptidases
Clarissa is a Group Leader in the School of Biology at the University of St Andrews, United Kingdom, where she is based at the Biomedical Sciences Research Complex. She obtained her PhD from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, New York, on the mechanisms of enzymes in tetrahydrofolate biosynthesis in Mycobacterium tuberculosis, and then held a postdoctoral fellowship at Yale University (2012–2014) before establishing her research group in St Andrews.
Her work focuses on enzymology, enzyme mechanism, and structural biology, with applications in biocatalysis and the development of new antimicrobial strategies. Her group studies enzymes such as cyclodipeptide synthases, flavin-dependent oxidases, and nucleoside 2'-deoxyribosyltransferases, and investigates bacterial secreted peptidases and their role in biofilms. A central aim of her current research is the design of protease-activated peptide prodrugs that selectively target pathogens such as Pseudomonas aeruginosa.
Daniel Rozen:
Evolution of antibiotic production in Streptomyces
Daniel is an Associate Professor at the Institute of Biology Leiden, Leiden University, the Netherlands, where he has led his research group since 2012 and coordinates the Master's programme in Evolutionary Biology. He trained at Michigan State University, working on experimental evolution in Escherichia coli, and in 2016 he received Leiden University's "Discoverer of the Year" award.
His work uses laboratory evolution experiments with bacteria to study the ecology and genetics of adaptation. His group focuses on the evolution of bacterial transformation and competence, the causes and consequences of phenotypic heterogeneity within populations, and the evolution and ecology of bacteriocins, with Streptomyces and Streptococcus pneumoniae as major model systems.