Ion Transport in Bacteria

Research in my laboratory is focused on membrane proteins involved in transport of ions across cellular membranes and in signalling processes relating to ion availability. Studies of membrane transporters/channels have had a great impact on our understanding human disease and drug design; indeed ion channels are, at present, the third biggest target classe in drug discovery and about 30% of current clinically marked drugs are targeted against these proteins.
The philosophy of my research, is to use simple and well studied bacterial model organisms, and a multidisciplinary approach to shed more light on two ubiquitous families of ion transporters both of which are conserved from bacteria to man: the ammonium transporter from the Amt/Rh family (TC 1.A.11) and the sulphate permease from the SulP/SLC26A family (TC 2.A.53).

I am a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.