Research Interests

In recent years research has focussed on the Actinomycetes and a major interest has been the diversity of the soil inhabiting Streptomyces and related genera which are important antibiotic producers. Collaboration with researchers from the University of Algiers on isolates from desert salt pans has revealed some extremophiles which may produce enzymes stable at high temperatures. The group maintains a culture collection of Actinomycete strains and I am at present curating this by regrowing the old glycerols some of which date back to the late 1980s and making new glycerol accessions for the collection.

Bovine tuberculosis, caused by Mycobacterium bovis, is still a major problem in the agricultural industry with our focus at present is the excretion of M. bovis in faeces and urine by badgers in the UK. Further collection of faecal samples from badger latrines on farms is planned.

In Tanzania we have collaborated with workers at the Sokoine University of Agriculture [SUA] in Morogoro and studied the prevalence of M. bovis and M tuberculosis in cattle and goat faeces, soil, milk, drinking water and household dust. Papers are being prepared by Archer Hung who gained a PhD for this work.

Publications

Selected publications