Rice blast, caused by the fungus Magnaporthe oryzae, is the most devastating disease of cultivated rice and destroys enough rice each year to feed 60 million people.
Meliodiosis is a disease of humans which occurs mainly in tropical and sub-tropical countries. The disease, caused by the bacterium Burkholderia pseudomallei, is often fatal even with treatment. Rick Titball is working on understanding the molecular mechanisms by which this pathogen causes disease, as well as devising a vaccine to protect against disease

Meliodiosis is a disease of humans which occurs mainly in tropical and sub-tropical countries. The disease, caused by the bacterium Burkholderia pseudomallei, is often fatal even with treatment. Rick Titball is working on understanding the molecular mechanisms by which this pathogen causes disease, as well as devising a vaccine to protect against disease.

Microbes and Disease

The group is focussed around understanding the molecular basis of bacterial and fungal infections of plants, animal and humans. It has a strong focus on science which provides new approaches to disease control and work is ongoing to devise vaccines and antimicrobials for the prevention and treatment of disease.

The group works closely with members of other groups. For example, with the biological chemistry group on the biochemistry of bacterial and fungal and bacterial pathogens, with the plant biology on the interactions of pathogens with plant hosts, with the Environment and Evolution group on fish models of infection and with the Theoretical and Computational Biosciences Group on modelling the behaviour of microbes. Our work to understand how microbes cause disease has resulted in a number of very productive linkages with physicists to devise new approaches to interrogating the host pathogen relationship and with mathematicians and engineers to model host-pathogen relationships in a holistic way.

Research funding 2008 - 2012

Substantial research income is present in the group from:

  • BBSRC
  • Cariplo Foundation
  • Centre for Environment
  • Fisheries & Aquaculture Science
  • Cystic Fibrosis Trust
  • Dstl
  • DTRA
  • ERC
  • Halpin Trust
  • MRC
  • NERC
  • NiH
  • South West Biomedical iNET
  • Syngenta
  • Wellcome Trust