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Profile
| Academic position | Full Professor |
|---|---|
| Research fields | Metabolism, Biochemistry, and Genetics of Microorganisms,Microbial Ecology and Applied Microbiology |
| Keywords | Genetic Interaction, Signal transduction, Systems biology |
| Honours and awards | 2022: EMBO Member 2022: Liliane Bettencourt Prize for Life Sciences 2018: ERC CoG Grant 2015: European Academy of Microbiology 2012: Sofja Kovalevskaja Award – Humboldt Foundation |
Current contact address
| Country | Germany |
|---|---|
| City | Heidelberg |
| Institution | Europäisches Laboratorium für Molekularbiologie (EMBL) |
| Institute | Molecular Systems Biology |
Host during sponsorship
| Prof. Dr. Lars Steinmetz | Genome Biology, Europäisches Laboratorium für Molekularbiologie (EMBL), Heidelberg |
|---|---|
| Start of initial sponsorship | 01/08/2012 |
Programme(s)
| 2012 | Sofja Kovalevskaja Award Programme |
|---|
Nominator's project description
| Bacteria play a crucial role in life on Earth. They help us digest our food, dispose of our waste, and helped to create the planet's atmosphere. Others are deadly and the cause of numerous diseases. Bacteria often live in multispecies communities, and can be found in environments as diverse as deep-sea trenches and the human gut. Recent advances in sequencing technologies and fields such as metagenomics - which applies genomic analysis to entire communities of microbes - have led to an immense increase in genomic sequence information that could transform our understanding of the the role of bacteria in health and the environment. Yet crucial questions remain unanswered. Scientists know little about the role played by up to one third of known genes, even in the most commonly studied bacteria species. Less is known about how genes and proteins organise into modules and how these modules interconnect. Working on the intersection of systems approaches and molecular mechanisms, Dr. Typas' work could significantly increase our understanding of the function of genes, and how these genes organize in pathways, enabling the organism to proliferate in diverse enviroments, but also interact with each other. Dr. Typas' research focuses in particular on the cell envelope - the outer wall of a bacterium's cell, which selects what can and can't enter the cell, and through which the bacterium senses its environment. By unravelling its architecture, the research could shed light on a wide range of mechanisms, such as antibiotic resistance, virulence, and biofilm formation - mulitcellular communties of bacteria that attach to surfaces and can be highly resistant to antibiotics. The work could also lead to the identification of new potential drug targets. |