Dr. David Mark
Post Doctoral Researcher
Roe Group Member: 2022 - Present
My interest is in exploring how bacteria can be engineered to do new, interesting, and useful things. Following on from an HNC in Electrical Engineering from Glasgow Clyde College, I switched fields to study a BSc (Hons) in Immunology and Microbiology at the University of Strathclyde, where I undertook a three-month ERASMUS+ internship at the University of Hamburg investigating how synonymous SNPs in the CFTR gene affect cystic fibrosis pathology under the supervision of Prof. Zoya Ignatova. For my final year honours project, I worked with Drs Katherine Carter and Michelle MacLean and generated proof-of-concept data for phototherapeutic treatment of leishmaniasis.
Immediately after my undergraduate degree, I was awarded a University of Strathclyde student excellence award and began studying for a PhD under the supervision of Dr Paul Herron where I mined the genomes of Micromonospora, a bacterial genus which produces a broad array of natural product antibiotics, in order to understand the organisation of natural product biosynthetic gene clusters within the chromosome, to help optimise the discovery of novel natural products and combat antimicrobial resistance. In the final six months of this project, I undertook a short MRC funded research assistantship under Prof. Andrew Roe to investigate the effect of aurodox – a natural product with notable antivirulence effects – on the type III secretion systems of Salmonella Typhimurium.
After submission of my thesis, I returned to the Roe Group as a postdoctoral researcher, where I now work as part of the Europe-wide PRISM-LT project, funded by Horizon EU and Innovate UK. My role in this project is to engineer E. coli MG1655 to function as a helper bacterium in 3D-printed bioinks, sensing metabolites from stem cells and in turn directing the differentiation of those cells into osteoblasts or adipocytes. This will enable spatial control of tissue differentiation in 3D space and allow for the printing of complex tissue types.
Publications
Mark, D.R., O’Boyle, N., Wale, K.R., Tucker, S.K., McHugh, R.E. and Roe, A.J., (2024) 'Aurodox inhibits type III secretion in multiple Gram-negative pathogens'. Open Biology, 14(11), p.240240, available: https://doi.org/10.1098/rsob.240240
