Mark Holmes leads a research group whose current focus of research follows their discovery of a new livestock-associated MRSA harboring a mecA homologue (now named mecC). The new MRSA was discovered during an epidemiological project milking.pnglooking at the transmission of S. aureus in dairy cows by one of our PhD students, Laura Garcia Alvarez. The original isolate was whole genome sequenced and analysed in collaboration with the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute by Matt Holden and colleagues. We subsequently obtained funding from Defra and the MRC to investigate the discovery further. We are now undertaking studies to establish the prevalence and diversity of the new MRSA using whole genome sequencing and other techniques. In collaboration with Prof Alexander Tomasz’s lab at Rockefeller University we have recently published the results of a study into the function of the PBP2a produced by the mecC gene.
http://www.vet.cam.ac.uk/directory/mah1@cam.ac.uk