Department of Veterinary Medicine

Research in Veterinary Medicine

Other relevant links

• Cambridge Infectious Disease

Research description

The Bacterial Infection Group (BIG) works on a number of different pathogens and covers many aspects of infection ranging from the nature of the bacteria themselves through to the mechanisms involved in the host recognising and resisting infection. The main bacteria worked on include Salmonella enterica, Campylobacter jejuni, bordetellae, veterinary streptococci (especially Streptococcus suis and Streptococcus equi), Staphylococcus aureus and Haemophilus parasuis. We emphasise work leading to an understanding of the host-pathogen relationship, and use techniques ranging from functional genomics to mathematical modelling to try to understand the dynamics of the interactions of bacteria with their hosts. We work at all scales from the molecular to the whole animal, and use tissue-culture cells, in vitro organ culture and whole animal infection models. We are committed to maintaining strong basic research, but do this in the context of finding improved intervention strategies, be they reliant on better husbandry, small-molecule therapeutics, or immunotherapies including vaccination. Our work is as relevant to human infectious disease as it is to infectious diseases of other animals, and we strongly hold the view an approach based on comparative pathology, whereby a natural pathogen is studied in its natural host, is bound to be more productive and useful than studying a human pathogen in a non-natural rodent model.

Main collaborators

• Professor Tom Humphrey, University of Bristol
• Professor Ian Charles, University of Sheffield
• Dr Mark Stevens, Institute for Animal Health, Compton
• Professor Gordon Dougan, Sanger Institute
• Dr Eric Harvill, Penn State University, Pennsylvania
• Dr Louise Temple, James Madison University, Virginia
• Dr Jeff Miller, UCLA

Key publications since 2002

• Northen, H., G. K. Paterson, F. Constantino-Casas, C. E. Bryant, S. Clare, P. Mastroeni, S. E. Peters and D. J. Maskell "Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium mutants completely lacking the F(0)F(1) ATPase are novel live attenuated vaccine strains." Vaccine 28(4): 940-949. [PubMed]
• Peters, S. E., G. K. Paterson, E. S. Bandularatne, H. C. Northen, S. Pleasance, C. Willers, J. Wang, A. K. Foote, F. Constantino-Casas, T. J. Scase, B. A. Blacklaws, C. E. Bryant, P. Mastroeni, I. G. Charles and D. J. Maskell "Salmonella enterica serovar typhimurium trxA mutants are protective against virulent challenge and induce less inflammation than the live-attenuated vaccine strain SL3261." Infect Immun 78(1): 326-36. [PubMed]
• Langridge, G. C., M. D. Phan, D. J. Turner, T. T. Perkins, L. Parts, J. Haase, I. Charles, D. J. Maskell, S. E. Peters, G. Dougan, J. Wain, J. Parkhill and A. K. Turner (2009). "Simultaneous assay of every Salmonella Typhi gene using one million transposon mutants." Genome Res 19(12): 2308-16. [PubMed]
• Chaudhuri, R. R., S. E. Peters, S. J. Pleasance, H. Northen, C. Willers, G. K. Paterson, D. B. Cone, A. G. Allen, P. J. Owen, G. Shalom, D. J. Stekel, I. G. Charles and D. J. Maskell (2009). "Comprehensive identification of Salmonella enterica serovar typhimurium genes required for infection of BALB/c mice." PLoS Pathog 5(7): e1000529. [PubMed]
• Chaudhuri, R. R., A. G. Allen, P. J. Owen, G. Shalom, K. Stone, M. Harrison, T. A. Burgis, M. Lockyer, J. Garcia-Lara, S. J. Foster, S. J. Pleasance, S. E. Peters, D. J. Maskell and I. G. Charles (2009). "Comprehensive identification of essential Staphylococcus aureus genes using Transposon-Mediated Differential Hybridisation (TMDH)." BMC Genomics 10: 291. [PubMed]
• King, J. D., E. Vinogradov, A. Preston, J. Li and D. J. Maskell (2008). "Post-assembly modification of Bordetella bronchiseptica O polysaccharide by a novel periplasmic enzyme encoded by wbmE." J Biol Chem. 284: 1474-1483. [PubMed]
• Holt, K.E., Parkhill, J., Mazzoni, C.J., Roumagnac, P., Weill F.-X., Goodhead Rance, R., Baker, S., Maskell, D.J., Wain, J., Dolecek, C., Achtman, M. and Dougan, G. (2008) High-throughput sequencing provides insights into genome variation and evolution in SalmonellaTyphi. Nature Genetics. 40: 987-993. [PubMed]
• Grant, A.J, Restif, O., McKinley, T.J., Sheppard, M., Maskell, D.J., and Mastroeni, P. 2008. Modelling within-host spatiotemporal dynamics of invasive bacterial disease. PLoS Biol. 6: 757-770. [PubMed]
• Parkhill J, 51 authors, Maskell DJ. 2003. Comparative analysis of the genome sequences of Bordetella pertussis, Bordetella parapertussis and Bordetella bronchiseptica. Nat. Genetics. 35, 32-40. [PubMed]
• Liu M., Deora R., Doulatov S.R., Gingery M., Eiserling F.A., Preston A., Maskell D.J., Simons R.W., Cotter P.A., Parkhill J., Miller J.F. 2002. Reverse Transcriptase-Mediated Tropism Switching in Bordetella Bacteriophage. Science. 295, 2091-2094. [PubMed]