School of Infection & Immunity

Professor Malcolm White 

Title: Nucleotide Signalling by the Bacterial Immune System

Synopsis:

All living things are infected by viruses, leading to conflict or cooperation. The interactions between cells and viruses have thus shaped the evolution of life in a profound way. Discoveries arising from the study of antiviral defence systems in bacteria have been fundamental to the development of molecular biology (Restriction-Modification systems harnessed for cloning) and the new era of genome editing for research, strain improvement and human health heralded by the CRISPR system. In the past few years, scores of new defence systems have been detected in bacteria – many appearing ancestral to components of the human immune system. This seminar will focus on recent work by the White lab on bacterial defence systems that function via nucleotide signalling, including the wide variety of effector proteins used to combat infection and the mechanism viruses use to subvert defence.

Bio:

Malcolm White is a Professor of Biochemistry at the University of St Andrews. He has led a group there for 24 years, following periods of postdoctoral research in Scotland and California. He studies antiviral defence systems in microbes, discovering new enzymes and pathways that provide antiviral immunity by detecting and destroying viral invaders. His group has a particular interest in defence systems that use cyclic nucleotide signals, such as type III CRISPR and CBASS, as well as viral strategies to subvert this signalling. Malcolm is funded by the European Research Council and BBSRC. 

First published: 18 September 2026

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