Tara Hunter

• BSc (Hons) Biomedical Sciences
• Investigating the localisation of clinical uropathogenic Escherichia coli strains to the tight junctions of bladder cells.

Urinary tract infections (UTIs), caused by bacteria infecting the bladder, are one of the most common bacterial infections with over 150 million cases reported annually. Uropathogenic Escherichia coli (UPEC) are the main cause of these UTIs and the standard treatment is antibiotics. However, the over prescription of antibiotics to treat UTIs has created antibiotic resistant UPEC strains, making UTIs difficult to treat.

New therapeutics are required to work alongside or replace antibiotics, but before this can happen a better understanding of UTIs is needed. It has been shown that an UPEC strain isolated from an UTI patient localised to specialised regions - called tight junctions (TJ) - of bladder cells. This project used two UPEC strains isolated from two different UTI patients and engineered to fluoresce green, to explore whether these strains also localised to bladder cell TJs. Results showed that these UPEC strains did localise to the TJ regions, highlighting their importance in the infection process.  These data also indicate that masking TJs could prevent bacterial attachment and infection, and therefore are potential therapeutic targets.

Funding sources: Microbiology Society & Newcastle University

Project Supervisor: Dr Judith Hall