Nicholas Tucker

2009-Present, Lecturer in Molecular Microbiology, University of Strathclyde
2005-2009, Post-doctoral fellow, John Innes Centre, Norwich 
2002-2005 PhD. Molecular microbiology, University of East Anglia 
1999-2000 MSc. Human Molecular Genetics, Imperial College, London. 
1996-99 BSc. (Hons.) Biochemistry, Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh.

The unifying theme across my research is bacterial gene regulation. Bacteria must be able to efficiently respond to changes in their environment by altering the expression of specific genes. This is most commonly achieved at the transcriptional level by proteins that either activate or repress the activity of RNA-polymerase.

Research Areas:

1. Gene regulation and signaling by bacterial enhancer binding proteins
2. Nitric oxide sensing and metalloproteins (Rrf2 family)
3. Pseudomonas aeruginosa pathogenicity
4. E. coli and Streptomyces coelicolor nitrogen metabolism

Nitric oxide is a toxic radical gas that is produced by macrophage cells as a broad range antibiotic. Bacterial pathogens have evolved a number of systems for detoxifying nitric oxide such as flavorubredoxin and flavohemoglobin in E. coli . The expression of the genes encoding these proteins is nitric oxide dependent and is controlled by the transcriptional regulators NorR and NsrR respectively. Both proteins sense nitric oxide via metal centres that control their ability to activate or repress gene expression.