Lucy Eland

Newcastle University | NCL · School of Computing Science

Rhodococcus equi ATCC13557 was selected as a model organism to study oestrogen degradation based on its previous ability to degrade 17α-ethinylestradiol (EE2). Biodegradation experiments revealed that R. equi ATCC13557 was unable to metabolise EE2. However, it was able to metabolise E2 with the major metabolite being E1 with no further degradation...

Bacterial biofilms in natural and artificial environments perform a wide array of beneficial or detrimental functions and exhibit resistance to physical as well as chemical perturbations. In dynamic environments, where periodic or aperiodic flows over surfaces are involved, biofilms can be subjected to large shear forces. The ability to withstand t...

Many bacteria can form wall-deficient variants, or L-forms, that divide by a simple mechanism that does not require the FtsZ-based cell division machinery. Here, we use microfluidic systems to probe the growth, chromosome cycle and division mechanism of Bacillus subtilis L-forms. We find that forcing cells into a narrow linear configuration greatly...

Motivation: Codon optimisation, the process of adapting the codon composition of a coding sequence, is often used in synthetic biology to increase expression of a heterologous protein. Recently, a number of synthetic biology approaches that allow synthetic constructs to be deployed in multiple organisms have been published. However, so far, design...

Sulfur oxidizing Sulfurimonas spp. are widespread in sediments, hydrothermal vent fields, aquifers, and subsurface environments such as oil reservoirs where they play an important role in the sulfur cycle. We determined the genome sequence of the oil field isolate Sulfurimonas sp. strain CVO and compared its gene expression during nitrate‐dependent...

Wall deficient variants of many bacteria, called L-forms, divide by a simple mechanism that does not depend on the complex FtsZ-based cell division machine. We have used microfluidic systems to probe the growth, chromosome cycle and division mechanism of Bacillus subtilis L-forms. The results show that forcing cells into a narrow linear configurati...

Biofilms occur in a broad range of environments with heterogeneous physico-chemical conditions, such as in bio-remediation plants, on surfaces of biomedical implants and in the lungs of cystic fibrosis patients. In these scenarios, biofilms are subjected to shear forces, but the mechanical integrity of these aggregates often prevents their disrupti...

Waste Stabilization Ponds are widely used across the world as a passive wastewater treatment for domestic wastewaters, but are often treated as a ‘black box’ with little known about their ecology, especially their phototrophic communities. This study uses molecular methods and flow cytometry, including polymerase chain reaction (PCR), denaturing gr...

Microfluidics offers the technology for creating and maintaining microenvironments that is much needed for the microscopic study of bacteria. Over the past decade, microfluidics has been used in an increasingly large number of research studies, resulting in many important insights and discoveries. This chapter highlights some recent applications of...

Granules were observed after more than two years of operation in two semi-continuously fed intermittently aerated reactors treating swine wastewater with aerobic:anoxic cycles of 1:1 h and 1:4 h. Subsequently, the granules and flocs were compared with respect to physical characteristics, activity, and microbial community structure. Granules exhibit...

The use of molecular methods to investigate microalgal communities of natural and engineered freshwater resources is in its infancy, with the majority of previous studies carried out by microscopy. Inefficient or differential DNA extraction of microalgal community members can lead to bias in downstream community analysis. Three commercially availab...