Sardis Marios Frantzeskos

I love studying tiny little proteins and bacteria cells, trying to figure out how these minuscule marvels of nature operate and affect our lives and our Earth. Bacteria are the organisms that have truly inherited Earth. They have been around since the very beginning and are ubiquitous. They inhabit every corner of our planet, from the sub-zero environment of the poles; our intestine and skin; deep hydrothermal vents where the temperature of the water goes well above 100oC and they feed on poisons. 

I have been studying the biology of bacteria since the early days of my Masters thesis. My work has contributed to the understanding of basic functions bacteria perform, like protein sorting and secretion.

Currently I am trying to dissect the biogenesis of cell wall in bacteria. The cell wall is one of the hallmarks of bacterial cells. It is a very robust structure that helps bacteria to maintain their shape, regulates their division and allows them to invade and colonize our body. Many of our most successful antibiotics target proteins that maintain the bacterial cell wall, thus causing its disruption and eventually cell death.

I want to discover the mechanisms proteins use to construct the bacterial cell wall for two reasons; understand how these remarkable creatures operate; and figure out new ways to combat the ones that infect us causing morbidity and mortality.