Martin Buck

Martin Buck FRS, FRSB is Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology. He obtained his BSc in Biochemistry from London University, PhD from NIMR Mill Hill, London, held an ACS postdoctoral fellowship at UC Berkeley, was a staff scientist at the AFRC-BBSRC Nitrogen Fixation Laboratory (University of Sussex) before joining ICL in 1994.

He is professor of Molecular Microbiology. His work falls into the area of mechanistic molecular microbiology. In particular his group researches the strategies used by bacteria to regulate gene transcription in response to abiotic and biotic cues.

Using genetics and biochemistry and collaborative working with biophysicists and structural biologists the molecular transactions which form stress signalling pathways impacting upon the bacterial RNA polymerase are revealed, as is the way in which transcription is regulated through conformational changes in the multi-subunit RNA polymerase.

These stress-regulated systems are potential drug targets, some are induced by antibiotics and several are validated targets for antimicrobials. They also afford potential for novel synthetic gene regulatory circuit designs.

By example his collaborations with membrane chemists led to the proposal that inner membrane stress is manifest as stored curvature elastic stress:

• McDonald C, Jovanovic G, Ces O, Buck Mclose, 2015, Membrane Stored Curvature Elastic Stress Modulates Recruitment of Maintenance Proteins PspA and Vipp1, MBIO, Vol: 6, ISSN: 2150-7511

And their biochemical work on bacterial enhancer dependent transcription helped found a program of structure function work in this area:

• Yang Y, Darbari VC, Zhang N, Lu D, Glyde R, Wang Y-P, Winkelman JT, Gourse RL, Murakami KS, Buck M, Zhang Xclose, 2015, Structures of the RNA polymerase-sigma(54) reveal new and conserved regulatory strategies, SCIENCE, Vol: 349, Pages: 882-885, ISSN: 0036-8075
• Zhang N, Schaefer J, Sharma A, Rayner L, Zhang X, Tuma R, Stockley P, Buck Mclose, 2015, Mutations in RNA Polymerase Bridge Helix and Switch Regions Affect Active-Site Networks and Transcript-Assisted Hydrolysis, JOURNAL OF MOLECULAR BIOLOGY, Vol: 427, Pages: 3516-3526, ISSN: 0022-2836

Their circuit design work is in collaboration with Bajoun Wang at Edinburgh University:

• Wang B, Barahona M, Buck M, 2015, Amplification of small molecule-inducible gene expression via tuning of intracellular receptor densities, NUCLEIC ACIDS RESEARCH, Vol: 43, Pages: 1955-1964, ISSN: 0305-1048

Their gene control studies are conducted at a global level as well as mechanistic one:

• Brown DR, Barton G, Pan Z, Buck M, Wigneshweraraj Sclose, 2014, Nitrogen stress response and stringent response are coupled in Escherichia coli, NATURE COMMUNICATIONS, Vol: 5, ISSN: 2041-1723