Jonathan Gauntlett, PhD

My research concerns the mechanisms by which bacteria sense changes in their environment and initiate appropriate transcriptional responses.

I am a post-doctoral researcher supported by a Marsden Fund grant. I recently completed my PhD under the supervision of Associate Professor Greg Cook at the University of Otago.  During that time I investigated how the pathogenic organism, Enterococcus faecalis responds to the antibiotic bacitracin via the regulatory protein BcrR.

I am currently working on the CbrA/CbrB signal transduction system that regulates the metabolism of histidine and plays a role in the carbon/nitrogen balance of metabolism in Pseudomonas fluorescens.  CbrA is a large membrane localised histidine-kinase.  I am interested in determining how CbrA senses histidine in order to activate CbrB, which in turn initiates a transcriptional response.  I am also interested in determining the CbrB regulon by investigating the interaction between CbrB and the target regulatory regions on DNA to which it binds.  This investigation utilises biochemical techniques such as bacterial protein expression, purification, reconstitution and other biochemical assays.

Publications from previous work

Gauntlett J.C., Gebhard S., Keis S., Manson J.M., Pos K.M., Cook G.M. (2008). Molecular analysis of BcrR, a membrane-bound bacitracin sensor and DNA-binding protein from Enterococcus faecalis. Journal of Biological Chemistry 283, 8591-8600.