Our People
Dr Gideon Mamou
Research Member of Common Room
Postdoctoral Fellow
Department of Biochemistry
I’m a post-doctoral researcher at the Department of Biochemistry since 2018. My main fields of interest are bacterial biochemistry and cell biology.
I got my PhD from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem where I studied the development of multicellular communities in bacteria and the means of communication used to coordinate their construction. In 2018 I received an EMBO long-term fellowship to study the spatiotemporal organization of the bacterial outer membrane. Since it is the outermost layer of the bacterial envelope which forms a formidable barrier to antimicrobials, understanding the organization and the mechanism of its biogenesis is crucial for the development of much needed new antibiotics.
My current study aims to elucidate how new proteins are introduced into the outer membrane of Gram-Negative bacteria and learn about the dynamic nature of the machinery which inserts them. In particular, I’m investigating how the Bam complex is organized on the surface of the cell and how changes in the physiological and environmental conditions affect its activity in outer membrane protein biogenesis. In order to answer those intriguing questions, I’m taking a multidisciplinary approach which combines several microscopy techniques, protein biochemistry and the development of new reagents.