News

Our paper “Characterization of putatively lytic bacteriophages able to infect Xanthomonas citri subsp. citri and identification of novel putative exopolysaccharide depolymerases” is out in Microbial Genomics.

Together with colleagues in Brazil, the US and the UK, we isolated and sequenced 72 bacteriophages that infect Xanthomonas citri, the bacterium that causes Asiatic citrus canker. Almost all of them are closely related, like the bacterial population they infect. Using structure-based annotation (HHsearch and AlphaFold), we found conserved tail-fibre proteins that may be depolymerases, able to break down the bacterium’s xanthan gum capsule. In greenhouse trials, one phage cut canker lesions by 60%. This makes phages a promising, sustainable alternative to copper sprays.

Read the paper: 10.1099/mgen.0.001821

Our paper “A cloaked glutamate decarboxylase sustains the GABA shunt in Mycobacterium tuberculosis” is out in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Mycobacterium tuberculosis Rv2531c had long been annotated as a lysine/ornithine/arginine decarboxylase, a superfamily of more than 26,000 sequences. It isn’t one. Combining bioinformatics, microbiology, metabolomics and enzymology, we demonstrate that it is instead an L-glutamate decarboxylase that sustains carbon flux through the γ-aminobutyric acid (GABA) shunt in M. tuberculosis.

I contributed the creation and analysis of the sequence similarity network that placed Rv2531c in the context of its enzyme family, showing that the superfamily is composed of distinct forms with different domain organisations, and that Rv2531c belongs to a group in which no enzyme had been experimentally characterised.

A good reminder of how easily annotation bias propagates across homologous sequences, and of what network-based approaches can reveal when we look at a family as a whole rather than one sequence at a time.

Work led by Hai Minh Thai and Luiz Pedro S. de Carvalho, with Debbie M. Hunt, Yugen Miyahara, Manisha Priya and Htin L. Aung.

Read the paper: 10.1073/pnas.2619778123

The Faculty of Science and Engineering at Manchester Metropolitan University has adopted a new structure as of August 2026. I am now part of the School of Biological and Chemical Sciences.

Since July 2026, I’ve been a member of the Acid Fast Club, the UK’s mycobacteria research community.

Three papers I contributed to came out in 2024.

• “Cryptic enzymatic assembly of peptides armed with β-lactone warheads”, Nature Chemical Biology
• “Biosynthesis and function of 7-deazaguanine derivatives in bacteria and phages”, Microbiology and Molecular Biology Reviews
• “Bioinformatics-facilitated identification of novel bacterial sulfoglycosidases that hydrolyze 6-Sulfo-N-acetylglucosamine”, ACS Bio & Med Chem Au

See the full list on the Publications page.

I’ve been awarded a Springboard Award from The Academy of Medical Sciences (project SBF009\1016, £125,000, August 2024 to July 2026) for STEROSPRING, characterising an uncharted lanosterol catabolic pathway in non-tuberculous mycobacterial (NTM) species.

Details on the Funding page.

Since August 2024, I’ve been Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) in Biochemistry in the Department of Life Sciences at Manchester Metropolitan University, having joined as Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in June 2023.