BTG- Researcher-led Project Imaging growth of antibiotic-producing bacteria

We will develop a system for numerically characterising polarized growth (vasculature, plant roots and filamentous microorganisms) using the filamentous antibiotic-producing bacterium Streptomyces as a model system. This will provide an insight into ways of increasing the efficiency of antibiotic production, and will subsequently provide a framework for application to polarized growth in general. We will combine expertise in microbiology, engineering and mathematics to image streptomycete growth, extract numerical features from movies, and develop mathematical models describing filamentous growth. This will allow us to characterise filamentous growth in response to different biological conditions and better understand polarized growth in general.