Characterisation of BldC a novel transcription factor required for development and antibiotic production in Streptomyces

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The harmless soil bacteria called streptomycetes are vital to human welfare because they are the source of the vast majority of antibiotics used by doctors to cure infectious diseases, as well as providing us with numerous other medicines used, for example, to treat cancer, and to help organ transplant patients. We have identified a key regulator (called a 'transcription factor') that switches the genetic machinery of these useful bacteria to allow them to reproduce themselves and to make antibiotics. The aim of this work is to find out exactly how this regulator works at the molecular level, how its activity is controlled, to understand what it does in the cell (what genes it controls), and how this brings about antibiotic production and bacterial reproduction. We also know that similar regulators are present in other bacteria, including pathogenic bacteria that cause fatal diseases like tuberculosis and diphtheria. Thus, this work will also provide potential insights into the function of these regulators in other bacteria important to human health.