Job Description
Project Description
The rise of antibiotic resistance has created an urgent need for novel therapeutic strategies. Anti-virulence approaches – which neutralize bacterial weapons rather than killing the bacteria themselves – offer key advantages: reduced harm to the commensal microbiome and lower selective pressure for resistance. Clostridium‑derived β‑pore‑forming toxins are major virulence factors causing severe disease in humans and animals, and represent attractive targets for such an approach. The PhD project in the group of Prof. Benoît Zuber aims to determine high‑resolution structures of Clostridium β‑pore‑forming toxins, alone and in complex with rationally designed peptide inhibitors, using single‑particle cryo‑electron microscopy and cryo‑electron tomography. This work is carried out in the frame of the SNSF Sinergia consortium DISPERSE (“Designing Inhibitors Against Clostridial Pore‑Forming Toxins: A Structure‑Based Approach”), in close collaboration with the...