CIT's Mark Fenton wins APC Poster Prize - April 2011
Congratulations to PhD student Mark Fenton from Cork Institute of Technology who won the best poster presentation prize, sponsored by the Alimentary Pharmabiotic Centre at the 40th Annual UCC Food Research Conference recently.
Mark’s poster presentation was entitled “ Three dimensional structure of an antistaphylococcal peptidase CHAPk cloned from staphylococcal bacteriophage K”.
Mark works under the supervision of Dr Aidan Coffey at the Department of Biological Sciences at Cork Institute of Technology and APC’s Prof Paul Ross at Teagasc Moorepark Food Research Centre.
The anti-microbial agent, CHAPk is highly applicable for the control of pathogenic staphylococci, particularly antibiotic resistant strains including MRSA and VRSA. In vivo trials have already been carried out with this agent and proved highly effective in eliminating clinical isolates of the pathogen. Predicting the 3D structure of novel proteins like CHAPk by bioinformatic analysis can aid in determining valuable information in relation to structure, binding and active sites in their development as potent antibacterial agents.
Picture: Mark Fenton with Catherine Buckley, APC
