Grant MJ Hall is an MRC student co-supervised with Prof Susan Wyllie to continue our collaborative work to develop Mode-of-Action technologies and insight for Cryptosporidium. On Friday November 7th, Grant gave a seminar on his PhD project and then had a successful viva. Congrats for several years of hard work and for presenting and defending your thesis so well. We are so very proud of you!
Special thanks to Prof Rita Tewari for serving as External Examiner and Prof Marcus Lee as Internal Examiner, and Prof David Horn for acting as convenor.
Left to Right: Prof Rita Tewari, Prof Susan Wyllie, Dr. Grant MJ Hall, Prof Marcus Lee, Dr Mattie Christien Pawlowic
Grant’s hat, showcasing memories for 4 years… and also a thank-you slide dedicated to Watson.
Our lab PhD alumni came back (Ross, Emma, and Jack) and as the second mode-of-action focussed PhD student a brief “sorting hat” ceremony was performed 🙂
We also celebrated with a Guinness Chocolate cake, a shared favorite of both Mattie and Grant’s of the new local restaurant, East Field, on Perth Road. This time courtesy of Mattie (recipe from Nigella).
During the summer of 2024 we posted an article to biorxiv about the function of Cryptosporidium Oocyst Wall Proteins (COWPs) in Cryptosporidium transmission. We are excited to share this week that it has now been peer-reviewed and published at PLoS Pathogens!
Congrats to all the authors, but especially Dr. Ross Bacchetti who performed a lot of this work during his PhD in the lab. Also special thanks to Sarah Stevens, current PhD student for continuing the work and helping it get to publication.
This is a major output of the lab’s Sir Henry Dale Fellowship (Royal Society and the Wellcome Trust), and provided key preliminary data for our new Career Development Award (Wellcome Trust). Thanks to Susan Wyllie, David Horn, Marcus Lee and his lab, and the peer reviewers for their feedback on the early versions of the manuscript.
In this publication we confirm that the COWPs are true oocyst wall proteins, identify the first markers of the oocyst wall suture, and characterise oocysts that lack COWP8. This sets a foundation of experimental approaches to study oocyst wall formation and function in our current grant.
We look forward to celebration with as many co-authors as possible soon 🙂
Left to Right: Lee, Mattie, Sarah, Peyton, Grant (thanks to Mukul Rawat for taking the photo!)
Dr. Mattie Christine Pawlowic is a Principal Investigator and Sir Henry Dale Fellow. Her group is a member of the Wellcome Centre for Anti-Infectives Research at the University of Dundee. She established her independent research group in 2017 funded primarily by a Sir Henry Dale Fellowship from the Wellcome Trust and The Royal Society (£1.5 million; 2019-2025).
Thanks to a Career Development Award (CDA) from the Wellcome Trust, Mattie’s lab has been awarded £3.08 million to fund the lab for the next 8 years! This funding will commence in May, 2025. These awards are incredibly competitive, with only one other group from the University of Dundee successfully being awarded this type of research grant since CDAs were established.
You can read about the project on the Wellcome Trust’s website HERE, the University of Dundee press release HERE and the story on the WCAIR website HERE. You can read about our work more generally in the UoD Alumni magazine, “The Bridge” HERE. You can watch Mattie give a recent seminar where she describes how previous research in the lab has lead to this new project below:
An artist’s rendering of Cryptosporidium parasites (yellow) hatching out of their shell (orange). Credit Harry Duncan
Dr. Pawlowic’s lab studies Cryptosporidium, a parasite that infects the guts and causes severe diarrheal disease. The symptoms are severe and lead to impressive weight loss (often >15 pounds in < 2 weeks) and dangerous dehydration. Infection with this parasite is especially deadly for young, malnourished children. It is estimated that up to 200,000 children under the age of 2 around the world die annually from this disease.
Cryptosporidiosis can likewise be fatal for people who are immunocompromised (under immune suppression therapy for cancer treatment or an organ transplant, or a disease that affects the immune system like AIDS). People with intact immune systems also get sick, and it can require hospitalisation, but eventually their immune system can control the infection. There is currently no vaccine and no effective treatment for cryptosporidiosis.
Cryptosporidium is a waterborne pathogen that is transmitted inside a microscopic shell-like structure called an oocyst. The parasite is most often spread through contaminated water. This includes outbreaks in municipal water supplies and swimming pools. This is because Cryptosporidium is amazingly resistant to common water treatments, notably chlorination. Once ingested, parasites “hatch” from the oocyst and infect the intestine, causing diarrhoeal disease.
Hatching out of their eggshell is a critical bottleneck in parasite transmission. New tools the Pawlowic created allow us to investigate the biology of hatching and open this area for exploration. We recently identified proteins that are located at the zipper-like opening on the oocyst shell (Bacchetti et al biorxiv, see publication page). We will use genetics, biochemistry, and microscopy to understand how Cryptosporidium build the protective shell and zipper opening, and hatch at the perfect time. Using microscopic biomechanical techniques, with collaborators Aurelien Dumetre and colleagues in France (Lab Adhesion and Inflammation) will understand why oocysts are so resilient. These insights have the potential to help us understand how to interrupt infection and stop parasite transmission.
You see a short video of Mattie explaining some of our research questions below. Thanks to Nicola Caldwell, lead :
"It's really important to learn more about this parasite because it affects both ourselves and agriculture."@goldenpipette and researchers from @dundeeuni launched a study to discover more about the parasite cryptosporidium that cannot be killed by household cleaning products. pic.twitter.com/FQA7sugOEs
During Career Development Award, the awardee will develop their research capabilities, drive innovative programmes of work and deliver significant shifts in understanding related to human life, health and wellbeing.
To be competitive, your research proposal will be:
Bold. It aims to deliver a significant shift in understanding and/or it provides a significant advance over existing methodologies, conceptual frameworks, tools or techniques. It has the potential to stimulate new and innovative research.
Creative. Your proposed approach is novel – it develops and tests new concepts, methods or technologies, or combines existing ideas and approaches in a new way.
High quality. It is well-designed, clear, supported by evidence and the proposed outcomes/outputs are feasible.
Although Mattie wrote the application and interviewed in front of an interview panel at the Wellcome Trust, current and previous lab members made pivotal contributions to the application and my preparation. Thank you all for your support over the last 8 months during the process.
Mattie would also like to thank her mom and her son Clark.
With the pandemic over and my baby big enough to not mind mom being out of town for a few days, I’ve been lucky enough to get back to traveling for work. I have really enjoyed getting to hear exciting, cutting-edge science and network with new and old colleagues.
In April, Mattie attended the British Society for Parasitology’s meeting in Liverpool.
She was asked to give a talk about the lab’s work on organoids as a part of session on using organoid technology to study parasites. It was fun to share the stage with David Smith, our collaborator from Moredun, and Maria Duque-Correa, who I had early conversations with about setting up organoids.
Thanks @SPPIRITnetwork on twitter for the photo!
There were also sessions on antigenic variation and cool parasite cell biology. Jim Collins from UTSW talked about sensing of male and female schistosomes. We were lucky enough to have him come up to Scotland after the meeting and give a seminar in Dundee. I remember hearing him give a seminar when I was at the University of Georgia and also last year the Gordon Research Conference in Galveston. Impressive biology and always great to welcome another Texan to Scotland.
In early May, Mattie attended the first of the series of Wellcome Trust Researcher meetings held in London across the street from the Wellcome Trust.
I was thrilled to be asked to participate by giving a short presentation about our group’s discovery research, funded by my Sir Henry Dale Fellowship. The other ECRs invited to talk in this session were so fascinating. I learned a lot over the 2 days and appreciate the opportunity to get to hear more from the Wellcome Trust about their future vision, and also meet other researchers.
The meeting was 2 days before the cryptosporidiosis outbreak in Devon, UK. Highlighting the need for continued research into Cryptosporidium, as this pathogen is far from tackled.
It was great to catch up with old friends, colleagues, and hear what is new in the Toxoplasma field. Plus it was held in Berlin, which was an amazing place to explore during free time.
I also got a chance to catch up with Frank Seeber, who was my lab buddy when he did a sabbatical in Boris’ lab back in Athens.
He invited me and Kami for a traditional German dinner of schnitzel. We also got to enjoy the seasonal white asparagus. It was delicious! And fun to catch up!
In June I was back in Europe, this time to give a long-awaited seminar the Pasteur Institute. Lucy Glover invited me a long time ago, but a pandemic and then a baby delayed my trip until this year. I had a wonderful time meeting the parasitology groups there, discussing all things Cryptosporidium transmission, and enjoying Paris before the upcoming olympics. Thanks very much for having me and thanks for all your ideas and feedback!
Directly after my trip to Pasteur, I quickly travelled to the USA for the weekend to attend the wedding of Jennie Dumaine, of eLife MEDLE2 fame.
Mattie Christine Pawlowic Lab 