Dr. David Roper, School of Life Sciences, University of Warwick
Tuesday 1st March, 1:00 p.m., Cornwallis Octagon Lecture Theatre 2 (COLT2)
Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) is a major threat to human health, dramatically reducing the effectiveness of drugs that have been a substantial component of medical treatment for decades. The biosynthesis of the bacterial cell wall, and in particular the peptidoglycan layer provides opportunity for old and new antibiotics. Despite decades of understanding and drug development there are many aspects of bacterial cell wall biology that are not understood and even the mechanism of cell death from penicillin treatment is not fully understood. In the last few years we have seen a renaissance in interest and fundamental knowledge in respect of bacterial cell wall biosynthesis. At the heart of this process is the peptidoglycan biosynthetic pathway providing the key building block, lipid II. Subtle variation in the chemical structure of lipid II and particularly its pentapeptide component, can have profound consequence in later formation and metabolism of the peptidoglycan sacculus by the antimicrobial drug targets, the penicillin binding proteins (PBPs). In this presentation we will consider aspects of the peptidoglycan chemistry in the global pathogens, Staphlyococcus aureus and Steptococcus pneumonia and how this provides new insight into the enzymology and future inhibition of PBPs.