University of Cambridge
Physics

Microorganisms provide major new biotechnological opportunities, but bacterial antimicrobial resistance is also responsible for a growing global health crisis. Despite their apparent simplicity, much remains unknown about how bacteria sense and adapt to their environment. Like neurons, they maintain an electrical voltage across their cell membrane, and use it to power essential processes including nutrient uptake, motility, and the removal of harmful molecules from the cell via efflux pumps. Recent discoveries have shown that this voltage is dynamic, and that cells can generate rapid voltage spikes reminiscent of those produced by neurons. However, their origin and biological function remain largely unknown.

As an 1851 Research Fellow, I will investigate whether these electrical signals form part of the bacterial response to mechanical stimuli, giving bacteria a primitive “sense of touch”. Preliminary results suggest that the model bacterium Escherichia coli generates membrane voltage spikes in response to mechanical forces such as pressure and surface interactions. Understanding how this process works could reveal previously unknown bacterial sensory networks, and new forms of bacterial communication through the ion signals generated during voltage spikes.

This project combines approaches from physics and biology to answer two central questions: how do mechanical forces initiate electrical activity in bacteria, and can this primitive sense of touch be harnessed to restore the efficacy of existing antibiotics? I will address these questions using experiments and modelling to characterise the physical stimuli that trigger an electrical response, identify the channels or pumps that generate voltage spikes, and investigate how these signals affect the activity of the drug efflux pumps that bacteria use to expel antibiotics.

This fellowship will establish the importance of electrical signalling in bacterial sensing of and adaptation to their physical environment, and advance our fundamental understanding of microbial electrophysiology. By revealing the cellular mechanisms that link mechanical forces to an electrical response, it will also provide design principles for the development of new antimicrobial approaches complementing existing antibiotics, such as surface coatings and physical treatment strategies designed to weaken bacterial defences.