Scott Beatson
Associate Professor
Department of Chemistry & Molucular Science
The University of Queensland
Australia
Biography
Scott Beatson obtained a PhD in 2002 for his work on Pseudomonas aeruginosa genomics and pathogenesis with Prof John Mattick and Dr Cynthia Whitchurch at The University of Queensland. Previously he completed a BSc and MSc in Microbiology at the University of Otago, New Zealand. As a postdoctoral researcher he was awarded fellowships to study genomics at the University of Oxford (UK) with Prof Chris Ponting and at the University of Birmingham (UK) with Prof Mark Pallen. Since returning to The University of Queensland in 2006 as a NHMRC Howard Florey Fellow he has combined his interests in genomics and bacterial infectious diseases to establish a research group in the School of Chemistry and Molecular Biosciences.
Research Interest
The Beatson group aims to better understand the molecular mechanisms of infectious disease and identify potential therapeutic and diagnostic targets by exploiting “Next-gen” genomic data. A major focus of the group is the comparative analysis of genomes obtained from local clinical isolates of important human pathogens such as Escherichia coli, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, Staphylococci, Streptococci, Legionella pneumophila and Acinetobacter baumannii. In particular, the group is interested in the evolution and mobility of genes encoding virulence factors that are widely conserved amongst bacterial pathogens (e.g. fimbriae, pili and type III and type IV secretion systems and secreted effectors). World-wide there are thousands of bacterial genome and meta-genome projects in progress, but the bottle-neck remains data analysis. A major priority in the group is the development of bioinformatics software to effectively utilize Next-gen sequence data. Current projects range from researching fundamental questions such as “how has Escherichia coli pathogenesis evolved?” and "how are genes transferred between bacteria?" to the identification of potential diagnostic and vaccine targets and the development of software tools to enable integrated analysis of 100’s or 1000’s of bacterial genomes.
