Professor
Cynthia Whitchurch
FAA
Cynthia Whitchurch’s outstanding contribution is her discovery of novel roles for DNA that are unrelated to its genetic functions. Her seminal discovery that extracellular DNA (eDNA) is required for building multicellular bacterial communities called biofilms promoted a paradigm shift in our understanding of biofilm biology and demonstrated a novel role for DNA in nature. She has also demonstrated that eDNA facilitates the self-organisation of actively expanding biofilms and has identified explosive cell lysis as a novel mechanism for the release of cytosolic content, including eDNA, and membrane vesicles for use as public goods.
Fields of research
31 BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES- 3107 MICROBIOLOGY
For full list of research codes, please visit the ARC Website .
Expertise type
- Pathogens
- Biology
- Antibiotic Resistance
- Bacteria
- Biofilms
- Pseudomonas
- Bacterial Pathogens
- Bacteriology
- Infection
- Medical Devices
- Bacterial Pathogenesis
- Antibacterial Discovery
Please contact fellowship@science.org.au to request any updates to the data.