A difficult superbug: from armour to dormancy at molecular level
This is a hybrid seminar, with an in-person audience limited to 15 seats and virtual attendance via Zoom. Contact: jo.peel@path.ox.ac.uk to register.
Dr Salgado is a structural biologist and biochemist interested in proteins associated with pathogenicity and disease. After a PhD at STRUBI, Oxford, and postdoctoral experience at Birkbeck and Imperial College London, she established and leads the C. difficile Structural Microbiology group at Newcastle University.

Her lab focuses on detailed structural and functional characterisation of proteins involved in key pathogenicity pathways in a major human pathogen, Clostridioides difficile, now the most prevalent hospital acquired infection in the UK. Combining biochemistry, microbiology and structural approaches, they study C. difficile spores and surface proteins.

C. difficile’s armour – the S-layer
Like many bacteria, C. difficile has an outside para-crystalline layer called S-layer that is presumed to act as a protective armour and has been implicated in virulence, host interaction and immune activation. Recently, they determined the structure of SlpA, the main protein in the S-layer of C. difficile, and a model for S-layer assembly. This work provides a basis for development of C. difficile-specific therapeutics.

Dormancy – sporulation engulfment machinery
Work in the Salgado lab has identified two essential proteins involved in the early stages of sporulation. They have also contributed to elucidating details of the engulfment mechanism (Dembek et al., 2018) and start defining the complex machinery involved in this process, which was termed the engulfasome (Kelly and Salgado, 2019).
Current work focuses on further elucidating the molecular details of the engulfasome machinery.
Date: 11 February 2022, 14:00 (Friday, 4th week, Hilary 2022)
Venue: Pathology EPA Building, off South Parks Road OX1 3UB
Venue Details: Seminar Room
Speaker: Dr Paula Salgado (Biosciences Institute, Newcastle University)
Organising department: Sir William Dunn School of Pathology
Organiser: Jo Peel (University of Oxford, Sir William Dunn School of Pathology)
Organiser contact email address: jo.peel@path.ox.ac.uk
Host: Professor Matthew Freeman (Sir William Dunn School of Pathology, University of Oxford)
Part of: Dunn School of Pathology Research Seminars
Booking required?: Required
Booking email: jo.peel@path.ox.ac.uk
Audience: Members of the University only
Editor: Jo Peel