Overview
Topic status: We're looking for students to study this topic.
Chlamydia are gram negative bacteria with a unique biphasic developmental cycle. Chlamydia infections result in major health problems worldwide, causing such serious human diseases as trachoma, sexually transmitted disease leading to female infertility ( Chlamydia trachomatis) and respiratory disease leading to pneumonia. It has also recently been linked to heart disease and stroke ( Chlamydia pneumoniae ). Chlamydia also cause a wide range of important diseases in birds (psittacosis) and animals including cattle, sheep, cats, koalas, bandicoots, reptiles, etc. The past few years has seen the full genome sequencing of several species/strains of Chlamydia and this has heralded the dawn of a new era in chlamydial molecular biology. It has become clear that Chlamydia is widely spread in many animal species and in many of these, it is an important disease, potentially affecting their continued survival.
Project goals
This project has two main goals, these are:
- to use a PCR and genotyping approach to analysing chlamydial infections in a range of wildlife, including koalas and bandicoots
- to investigate the possibility of immunising koalas with a Chlamydia vaccine.
This project will make use of the following techniques and approaches to gain a better understanding of chlamydial infections in animals:
- access to samples from populations of koalas and bandicoots in particular will be used in the project
- use of quantitative PCR to measure infection levels in animals over time and to relate these levels to clinical disease status
- role of chlamydial infections in bandicoots by PCR detection of Chlamydia in a population under study
- genotyping of chlamydial isolates from various animals and attempts to relate the genotype present to the clinical diseases observed
- bioinformatics analysis of whole chlamydial genomes
- immunisation and immune response methodologies.
- Study level
- PhD, Masters
- Supervisors
- QUT
- Organisational unit
Science and Engineering Faculty
- Research area
- Contact
- Please contact supervisor for enquiries.
Professor Peter Timms
