Chance and Necessity: Evolution guided antibiotic improvement and discovery.

This project is focused on understanding how antibiotic producing Streptomyces species adapt to their environment during industrial strain improvement processes and how reproducible the mutational process is for increasing industrial performance and antibiotic production.

Using a combination of Long-Term Experimental Evolution (LTEE) studies, molecular genetics and genomics we will study adaptation and the epistatic interactions that shape the genomes of Streptomyces with a view to enhancing antibiotic production and discovering new antibiotics. We will use the model strain S. coelicolor to study how it adapts to new environments and culture conditions.

We will then apply this knowledge to an industrial lineage of Streptomyces.

This approach will increase our understanding of adaptive evolution in Streptomyces, the industrial strain improvement process and the role played by epistasis in antibiotic production which will facilitate more rapid industrial strain improvement processes in the future and expedite the development of new drugs.

This project will allow the successful applicant to develop a wide range of interdisciplinary and transferable skills which will prepare them for either an academic or industry-based career after completion of this PhD.