Matt Percy

 

 

Matt Percy is a PhD student with the Centre for Infection Prevention and Management.  His project, under the supervision of Angelika Grundling is entitled “investigation on the variation of LTA production in clinical Staphylococcus aureus isolates and mechanism of LTA glycosylation and its functional consequences"

Lipoteichoic acid (LTA) is an essential cell wall molecule present in certain gram-positive bacteria that performs a number of functions including roles in cell division, and stimulation of the immune system.  This project will focus on the modification of LTA with glycosyl groups.  LTA modification has been demonstrated to play a protective role for the cell as with D-alanine modification, which provides protection against positively charged antibacterial molecules found on the skin.  Glycosylation of cell surface molecules has been demonstrated to confer antibiotic resistance, so understanding this process in regards to LTA would be advantageous and may even provide novel drug targets.  The project will also investigate the amount of LTA produced by clinical Staphylococcus aureus strains, to provide insight into the role it plays in infection as a potent immune system stimulator.

 

 

Background

Matt Percy did his undergraduate degree in  medical microbiology and virology at the University of Warwick. While there he also undertook an 8 week project associated with the analysis of P.aeruginosa isolates from cystic fibrosis infections in comparison with environmental isolates, carrying out laboratoy work including the testing of a number of clinical isolates for virulence factors, epidemic markers and motility profiles.and performing lab techniques such as extracting DNA, and doing  PCR

Contact: m.percy09@imperial.ac.uk