Biography:Liz Sockett

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Liz Sockett
Born
Renee Elizabeth Sockett

1962 (1962)
Newcastle upon Tyne, England
Alma materUniversity of Leeds (BSc)
University College London (PhD)
AwardsDaiwa Adrian Prize (2007)
Scientific career
FieldsMicrobiology
Bdellovibrio bacteriovorus
InstitutionsUniversity of Oxford
University of Nottingham
University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign
ThesisBiochemistry of motility and taxis in purple photosynthetic bacteria (1986)
Websitenottingham.ac.uk/life-sciences/people/liz.sockett

Renee Elizabeth (Liz) Sockett is a professor and microbiologist in the School of Life Sciences at the University of Nottingham.[1][2] She is a world-leading expert on Bdellovibrio bacteriovorus, a species of predatory bacteria.[3][4]

Early life and education

Sockett was born in Newcastle upon Tyne in 1962 and completed her Bachelor of Science degree in biochemistry at the University of Leeds in 1983.[5] She moved to University College London (UCL) for her postgraduate study, and was awarded a PhD in 1986 for research on the biochemistry of motility and taxis in purple bacteria.[6]

Career and research

After completing her PhD, Sockett worked as a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign (1986-1988)[citation needed] and then the University of Oxford (1988-1990)[citation needed]. In 1991, she was appointed as a Lecturer at the University of Nottingham and subsequently promoted to Senior Lecturer (2001), Reader (2004) and finally Professor in 2005[7].

Her research group started by studying the photosynthetic bacterium Rhodobacter sphaeroides. Her interests in bacterial physiology and mechanisms then turned to understanding the bacterial predator Bdellovibrio bacteriovorus.[8][3] Bdellovibrio preys upon a wide range of bacteria including antibiotic-resistant pathogens that are harmful to human health. Sockett's lab have studied the genome of Bdellovibrio during the invasion of other bacteria.[5] Her group has identified several Bdellovibrio genes that make enzymes which break down important structural components of bacteria, and also secrete enzymes that break down chromosomes.[9] She is studying the application of predatory bacteria like Bdellovibrio to treat antimicrobial-resistant infections.[10]

Sockett's group worked together with Dr Alexandra Willis and her PhD supervisor Dr Serge Mostowy at Imperial College London to study Bdellovibrio predation in a zebrafish infection model. Zebrafish infected with a lethal dose of the antibiotic-resistant human pathogen Shigella flexneri were given Bdellovibrio as a treatment. Together, the researchers showed that Bdellovibrio could kill the Shigella, working synergistically with the zebrafishs' own immune system to promote zebrafish survival.[11][12][13]

Sockett and her group collaborated with Dr Erkin Kuru at Indiana University Bloomington, using fluorescent D-amino acids (FDAAs) to illuminate the mechanisms by which Bdellovibrio invades its prey. They discovered that Bdellovibrio forms a small reinforced 'porthole' in the cell wall of its prey through which it squeezes and then re-seals from the inside [14][15].

She also has long-standing and fruitful collaborations with Dr Andrew Lovering at the University of Birmingham, who studies the structural biology of predatory Bdellovibrio enzymes, and Professor Waldemar Vollmer at Newcastle University, who studies the structure of bacterial cell walls.

As part of a Human Frontier Science Program grant, Sockett collaborated with Professor Shin-Ichi Aizawa to study the Bdellovibrio interaction with Escherichia coli.[16] Her strains appeared in electron microscope images in the 2013 book The Flagellar World.[17]

Her research has been funded by numerous funding bodies including the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC), Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), Medical Research Council (MRC), Leverhulme Trust and the Wellcome Trust.

She is a leading communicator and strong role model for careers in microbiology, which was recognised by the award of the Peter Wildy Prize of the Society for General Microbiology in 2006, where her prize lecture was entitled "Not Just Germs - Bringing Bacteria to Life"[18].

Sockett was interviewed on The Life Scientific by Jim Al-Khalili in 2017[5] and is an advocate for public engagement and science outreach.[19]

Awards and honours

Her awards and honours include:

References

  1. ↑ Liz Sockett publications indexed by the Scopus bibliographic database. (Subscription content?)
  2. ↑ Sharp, P. M. (2005). "Variation in the strength of selected codon usage bias among bacteria". Nucleic Acids Research 33 (4): 1141–1153. doi:10.1093/nar/gki242. ISSN 1362-4962. PMID 15728743. 
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 Sockett, Renee Elizabeth (2009). "Predatory lifestyle of Bdellovibrio bacteriovorus". Annual Review of Microbiology 63: 523–539. doi:10.1146/annurev.micro.091208.073346. ISSN 1545-3251. PMID 19575566. 
  4. ↑ Rendulic, S. (2004). "A Predator Unmasked: Life Cycle of Bdellovibrio bacteriovorus from a Genomic Perspective". Science 303 (5658): 689–692. doi:10.1126/science.1093027. ISSN 0036-8075. PMID 14752164.  closed access
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 Al-Khalili, Jim (2017). "Liz Sockett on friendly killer bacteria: The Life Scientific" (in en-GB). BBC. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08mb1fm. 
  6. ↑ Socket, Renee Elizabeth (1986). Biochemistry of motility and taxis in purple photosynthetic bacteria. london.ac.uk (PhD thesis). University of London. OCLC 941031856. Copac 34556051.
  7. ↑ "Liz Sockett - The University of Nottingham" (in en-GB). https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/life-sciences/people/liz.sockett. 
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 "Elizabeth Sockett" (in en-gb). https://www.asm.org/index.php/aam-fellows/aam-fellows/fellows-elected-in-2017/item/6585-elizabeth-sockett. 
  9. ↑ "Dr. Liz Sockett Interview" (in en). Naked Scientists. https://www.thenakedscientists.com/articles/interviews/dr-liz-sockett-liz. 
  10. ↑ "Predatory Bdellovibrio bacteria-evolution of predation and application of predators against AMR infection" (in en). https://talks.ox.ac.uk/talks/id/4c4856d9-69a5-43be-8908-e71de22c8afc/. 
  11. ↑ Willis, Alexandra R.; Moore, Christopher; Mazon-Moya, Maria; Krokowski, Sina; Lambert, Carey; Till, Robert; Mostowy, Serge; Sockett, R. Elizabeth (December 2016). "Injections of Predatory Bacteria Work Alongside Host Immune Cells to Treat Shigella Infection in Zebrafish Larvae" (in English). Current Biology 26 (24): 3343–3351. doi:10.1016/j.cub.2016.09.067. ISSN 0960-9822. https://www.cell.com/current-biology/abstract/S0960-9822(16)31152-6. 
  12. ↑ Anon (2016). "How bacteria attack superbugs" (in en-GB). BBC News. https://www.bbc.com/news/av/health-38106462/prof-liz-sockett-tells-inside-science-how-predatory-bacteria-kill-superbugs. 
  13. ↑ "Harnessing the power of predatory bacteria as a 'living antibiotic'". https://phys.org/news/2016-11-harnessing-power-predatory-bacteria-antibiotic.html. 
  14. ↑ Kuru, Erkin; Lambert, Carey; Rittichier, Jonathan; Till, Rob; Ducret, Adrien; Derouaux, Adeline; Gray, Joe; Biboy, Jacob et al. (2018-01-08). "Author Correction: Fluorescent d-amino-acids reveal bi-cellular cell wall modifications important for Bdellovibrio bacteriovorus predation" (in En). Nature Microbiology 3 (2): 254–254. doi:10.1038/s41564-017-0087-1. ISSN 2058-5276. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41564-017-0087-1. 
  15. ↑ "Predatory bacteria that engineer 'portholes' and paint 'frescoes' in harmful bacteria" (in en). ScienceDaily. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/10/171005103458.htm. 
  16. ↑ "Shadowing the actions of a predator" (in en). Human Frontier Science Program. http://www.hfsp.org/frontier-science/awardees-articles/shadowing-actions-predator. 
  17. ↑ Aizawa, Shin-Ichi (2013) (in en). The Flagellar World: Electron Microscopic Images of Bacterial Flagella and Related Surface Structures. Elsevier. ISBN 0124172830. OCLC 885024658. 
  18. ↑ Anon (2006). "Peter Wildy Prize Lecture". https://microbiologysociety.org/grants/prize-lectures/peter-wildy-prize-lecture.html. 
  19. ↑ "Biology CPD for Science Teachers in the East Midlands: Professor Liz Sockett" (in en-gb). https://www.le.ac.uk/slcem/features/working-with-scientists-1.html. 
  20. ↑ Anon (2017). "Honor for UK-Japanese research" (in en). https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2007-12/uon-hfu120407.php. 
  21. ↑ Anon (2006). "Peter Wildy Prize Lecture". https://microbiologysociety.org/grants/prize-lectures/peter-wildy-prize-lecture.html. 
  22. ↑ Anon (2000). "Lord Dearing Award winners" (in en-GB). University of Nottingham. https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/professionaldevelopment/learningandteaching/awards/dearingawards/ldawinners.aspx. 





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