Dr Nicola Lynskey
Career Track Fellows
Contact details
Address
- Street
-
The Roslin Institute
Easter Bush Campus
Midlothian - City
- Post code
- EH25 9RG
Background
Nicki earned her doctoral degree at Imperial College London in 2013 under the mentorship of Prof Shiranee Sriskandan, where her research focused on deciphering the genetic basis for hyper-encapsulation in the important human pathogen group A Streptococcus. For her postdoctoral research she was funded by an MRC Centenary Award and a Sir Henry Wellcome Postdoctoral Research Fellowship working between Harvard Medical School, Imperial College London and Oxford University. This allowed her to continue working on group A Streptococcus, during which time she developed skills permitting characterisation of gene regulation mechanisms and bacterial modulation of the host immune response.
Nicki joined the Roslin Institute in September 2019 where her research focuses on gene regulation and innate immune evasion by pathogenic streptococci.
Research summary
The overall interest of the Lynskey Lab is the study of virulence factor regulation and innate immune modulation by pathogenic streptococci. Our work is currently focused on two important pathogens, Streptococcus agalactiae (group B Streptococcus), the causative agent of economically important infections in multiple animal hosts which has also emerged as a major human pathogen, and the human pathogen Streptococcus pyogenes (group A Streptococcus). We seek to identify regulatory genes that enable the bacteria to switch from a benign to invasive disease state and characterise their mechanism of action and impact on host immune defences. We are also interested to use this information to better understand and characterise the factors driving host-species adaptation of S. agalactiae, which causes significant disease in humans, cattle and fish.