Angelika Gründling
Visiting Research Professor from Imperial College London
Education
Masters, Microbiology, University of Vienna, Austria
Ph.D., Microbiology, University of Vienna, Austria
Research interest
While my “home lab” is at Imperial College in London, UK, supported by a Leverhulme Trust International Fellowship, I am spending a sabbatical year in the Rudner and Bernhardt Labs. The overarching goal of the research project is to fill gaps in our understanding of how the bacterial membrane is built. Membranes function as selective permeability barriers regulating the passage of molecules into and out of all living cells. In bacteria, it is composed of a phospholipid bilayer, of which the lipid named phosphatidylglycerol (PG) is one of the main ones. The enzymes required for PG synthesis have been characterised in some bacteria, but this is not the case in other, including Bacillus subtils. Furthermore, how lipids are transported from one leaflet of the membrane to the other is not fully understood even in extremely well characterized bacteria such as Escherichia coli. As part of my laboratory-based project, state-of-the-art genetic methods will be applied to discover proteins required to construct the bacterial membrane. It is expected that the uncovered proteins are present in many bacteria, thus opening future research avenues.
Some additional information on my fellowship work can be found at:
angelika_grundling{at}hms.harvard.edu
a.grundling{at}imperial.ac.uk