Focus Interview with Camilla Godlee

We are delighted to welcome Camilla Godlee back to the Department as a new group leader. We caught up with her to find out about her background, research priorities, and plans for her laboratory. 

1.    Tell us about your background and how you came to study biochemistry.
I was actually an undergraduate here in the Department. I read Natural Sciences at Cambridge with parts II and III Biochemistry, graduating in 2011. So, it's very exciting to be back as a group leader, and to catch up with the people who lectured me and inspired me to go into research in the first place. I chose to study Biochemistry because I was excited to learn about the actual molecular mechanisms controlling cellular processes. I then went on to do my PhD at EMBL in Heidelberg, Germany. My PhD work focused on endocytosis, which is the process by which things are taken up into the cell by membrane vesicle formation. For that work I learned a lot of fundamental cell biological techniques, including fluorescence microscopy. 

2.    What led you to focus on bacteria and disease?
My PhD focused on the membrane organisation of the cell and how proteins and biological processes are restricted to specific membrane compartments. During this time, I began to be interested in how pathogens, such as bacteria, interact with our cells. During an infection, bacteria come into contact with human cells and interact with the cell’s membrane compartments. It is important to know how they do this so that we can understand how bacteria cause disease. With my current work I’m still thinking in terms of cell biology. Learning how bacteria interact with the organisational processes in our cells can actually teach us fundamental things about how our cells work.

3.    Explain the main research questions your group is seeking to answer.
Many pathogenic bacteria, including Salmonella, E. coli and Chlamydia, use secretion systems, which act like molecular syringes, to inject virulence proteins into the infected cell. These virulence proteins function to disrupt the immune system and other healthy cellular processes. Often their functions depend on their ability to interact with the membrane structures of the infected cell. I am trying to determine the molecular mechanisms by which these virulence proteins interact with cell membranes, how their localisation in the infected cell is regulated, and how these interactions enable the bacteria to cause disease. 

4.    Are there any important collaborations with other research groups?
Cambridge is such an exciting place to set up my research group because there is so much excellent research going on, both inside and outside of the Department. I have some exciting collaborative projects with labs working on cellular membrane trafficking pathways to work out how bacteria hijack these pathways. I am also collaborating with labs working on different bacterial pathogens. I have had some great discussions with Ross Waller, who works on intracellular parasites. It is interesting to think about how these different types of pathogens survive within human cells. My work also has a lot of synergy with that of Ben Luisi, who is determining the structures of bacterial membrane proteins and that of Katherine Lilley, who is using mass spectrometry to determine where proteins are localised in the cell.

5.    How does your interdisciplinarity with Pathology help your research? 
My work perfectly spans the research themes of Biochemistry and Pathology. It focuses on the molecular mechanisms underlying pathogenic processes, which fits well within the research being carried out in the Department of Biochemistry. But ultimately, I am studying a disease process, so I also gain a lot from the intellectual environment in the Department of Pathology. My joint appointment enables me to bridge the two departments. My position in the Pathology department gives me access to fantastic collaborative opportunities, the facilities I need to do my work and plenty of interactions with people working on other infectious diseases. 

6.    How does your research contribute to the advancement of medicine and curing disease?
By focusing on virulence proteins from a range of different bacterial pathogens, I hope to uncover any similarities they have that could be exploited for therapeutic purposes. Ultimately, by determining how bacterial virulence proteins interact with human cell membranes, I aim to help design drugs that can block them.

7.    What are your future plans for expansion and tackling new research questions?
As a new group leader my first steps are to apply for more funding, and recruit some great PhD students and postdocs to work in the lab. In the future I plan to expand to look at virulence proteins from a range of different bacterial pathogens. My plan is to focus on virulence proteins that have shared abilities to target host cell membranes. This will tell me how different bacterial pathogens have adapted to respond to the membrane organisation of the infected cells.