Despite their ubiquity as research tools, there is still much we
don’t fully understand about bacteria — such as how they divide.
Learning more could point the way to new desperately needed
antibiotics. with red bands of FtsZ September 2012--Antibiotics
work in a variety of ways. Some destroy the bacterial protein
synthesis machinery. Some abort the construction of the
bacterial cell wall. Still others inhibit an enzyme bacteria
need to make a vital vitamin. But microbes have increasingly
developed resistance to these points of attack, and the World
Health Organization, among others, has sounded the alarm that
the utility of many antibiotics could soon expire. One possible
solution is to devise new classes of antibiotics, ones that
target novel parts of the bacterial architecture. That’s where
Erin Goley’s research comes in. Goley, an assistant professor of
biological chemistry, is not a drug researcher, but her basic
science studies may one day prove useful to drug developers.
Goley focuses on the bacterial