Professor Judith Armitage

Bacteria sense and respond to changes in their environment, by changing gene expression to produce proteins allowing growth in that environment or by swimming towards improving and away from harmful environments. They might also respond by attacking rival bacteria or host cells. My research centres on the mechanisms used to respond to environmental change, in particular bacterial swimming and its control by environmental signals. We are interested in how the 45nm rotary flagellum operates in living bacteria and to do this we use a combination of technologies from molecular genetics, in vitro and in vivo biochemistry through to single molecule measurements using state-of-the-art microscopy to characterise protein dynamics in living cells.