Christopher Mcdevitt

Biography

Membrane proteins account for about one-third of the proteins encoded by every genome but, in contrast to soluble proteins, they are poorly characterised. The research in my laboratory, based in the Research Centre for Infectious Diseases (RCID), investigates how the integral membrane protein ATP-binding cassette (ABC) transporters contribute to the virulence of the major human pathogens Streptococcus pneumoniae (responsible for >1 million deaths annually) and Staphylococcus aureus (a health care burden of >$1 billion AUS annually). My work has already made major advances in our understanding of how metal ion ABC transporters contribute to the virulence of these pathogens and the chemical biology of the host-pathogen interface. By understanding how these transporters function, our work is also providing the foundation for translating basic science into effective antimicrobial therapies. Notably, our research has already identified a molecular role for zinc in resisting bacterial infection, which is highly important as nearly 2 billion people are zinc deficient, and demonstrated the potential to exploit these ABC uptake transporters as antimicrobial targets due to their essential requirement for bacterial virulence, a complete lack of human homologs, and their highly exposed and accessible location on the bacterial cell-surface. The long-term goal of my research is to target these metal ion transporters with next generation antimicrobials, which will save over 1 million lives annually. My research to achieve this goal is focused, first on elucidating how bacterial pathogens, e.g. S. pneumoniae, facilitate metal ion homeostasis, and second how we can target these mechanisms to attenuate virulence in the host environment. To this end we will continue to study the structure/function relationships of how these metal recruiting proteins work and then exploit our cutting edge knowledge, in which we are acknowledged world-leaders, to develop the next generation of antimicrobial therapeutic agents.

Research Interest

Medicine,Medical Education,Research,etc