Claire Turner

Claire Turner is a Research Associate working under Professor Shiranee Sriskandan in the laboratory-based work-stream 2 “network in clinical infection diagnostics” which is co-directed by Kathy Bamford, lead in the Trust Microbiology Laboratories.  It involves close collaboration with   Dr. A. Efstratiou, Head, Strep Ref Unit and A. Kearns, Head Staph Ref Lab, Centre for Infections at the Health Protection Agency.

The aim of the work is to provide rapid research responses to novel challenges encountered in the hospital, community, and national settings. As such Claire interacts regularly with scientific colleagues at Centre for Infections, Colindale, the Trust diagnostic laboratories, and Trust Infection Control teams to determine major shifts in disease patterns related to S. aureus, S. pyogenes , and C. difficile  and also to identify leading clinical questions that can be answered most easily by laboratory-based research

Claire’s responsibilities include designing and conduct experiments to address reasons for epidemiological or virulence shifts in conjunction with Investigator and Collaborators, developing novel tools and methodologies, including where relevant cell culture and in vivo models, to address the above clinical research questions in the most appropriate manner and maintaining a collection of bacterial and patient samples that are relevant to understanding the pathogenesis of the above infections

Her specific research is on Staphylococcus aureus, Clostridum difficile, Streptococcus pyogenes and other nosocomial Gram positive organisms.

Background

Claire Turner was previously a post-doctoral researcher within the Department of Infectious Diseases and Immunity working on the regulation of SpyCEP expression and complementation of CovR mutant strain.  Prior to that Claire undertook both a MSc in Molecular Medicine and then a PhDwith the Department. Her first class undergraduate degree was in Biology, also from Imperial College.

Claire has expertise in the culturing or of gram positive and gram negative bacteria, PCR , DNA sequencing analysis with published sequences on NCBI, Cloning and electroporation, Mutagenesis and complementation, quantitative real time PCR including development of a new assay for S. pyogenes, southern and northern Analysis, SDS PAGE and Western Analysis.