Professor Brian G Spratt CBE FRS FMedSci

Molecular epidemiology and the population and evolutionary biology of bacterial pathogens

In the 1970's, I developed methods to detect the penicillin-sensitive enzymes of peptidoglycan synthesis as penicillin-binding proteins (PBPs) and dissected the role of the Escherichia coli PBPs in cell elongation, cell division and cell shape.  Subsequently, I worked on mechanisms of resistance to penicillin and the role of interspecies recombination and then became interested in the extent of recombination in bacteria and in their population biology.  More recently we developed new tools for identifying strains of bacterial pathogens - particularly multilocus sequence typing (MLST). At present our laboratory is mainly interested in bringing together molecular epidemiology and the population and evolutionary biology of bacterial pathogens.

We also have interests in developing new ways of assigning bacteria to species via the internet (eMLSA.net) and in the concept of species, in using high resolution strain characterisation for gonorrhoea and Chlamydia to identify individuals in sexual networks, and in bioinformatics.  Our interests in the latter extend from developing software for molecular epidemiology to Android software for smartphones with applications in community projects in ecology and epidemiology and for school kids/citizen scientists (EpiCollect).