Abstract: Air pollution is a critical global problem causing an eighth of all deaths in the world. Particulate matter (PM), a major component of air pollution, has the greatest impact on human health. PM exposure contributes to a range of diseases such as cancer, COPD, heart disease and stroke, and respiratory infections. Our recent studies were the first to show that as well as damaging the host, PM has a direct impact on bacteria that can cause respiratory infections. Our data show that Black Carbon (BC) exposure results in species-specific alterations in biofilm structure in both Streptococcus pneumoniae and Staphylococcus aureus, and alters bacterial colonisation in vivo. This bacterial response to BC occurs at the genetic level, altering the transcription of key genes involved in biofilm formation, colonisation and virulence. Consequently we show that bacteria are responding and adapting to exposure to air pollution, and this has an impact on how the bacteria infect the host.

Biography: Dr Julie Morrissey graduated from University of Leicester with a BSc Biological Sciences before undertaking a Ph.D in Microbial Yeast Genetics in the Department of Genetics, University of Leicester. Following her PhD, she moved to the University of Nottingham as a Research Fellow working with Professor Paul Williams on iron uptake in Staphylococcus aureus. Julie returned to the University of Leicester as a lecturer in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology until 2014, when she moved to the Department of Genetics where she is currently an Associate Professor in Microbial Genetics. Julie’s primary research interests are the molecular mechanisms important for respiratory bacteria, particularly Staphylococcus aureus and Streptococcus pneumoniae, adaptation to air and metal pollution, and how this impacts virulence and antibiotic resistance. In 2017, her interdisciplinary team was the first in the world to show that air pollution alters the behaviour of bacteria potentiating host colonisation. Recently, her group have also shown that that epidemic strains of methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) possess an additional novel copper hyper-resistance mechanism that is essential for enhanced survival of MRSA against the host immune response. Julie is the co-Director of the Leicester Microbial Sciences and Infectious Diseases Research Centre which is a focus for all microbiology related interdisciplinary research in Colleges of Life Sciences, Science and Engineering, Social Sciences, Arts and Humanities and the Respiratory and infectious Diseases clinical departments in NHS UHL Trust.