Before joining the Quadram Institute I completed a PhD and PostDoc with Prof Matt Hutchings looking at the biosynthesis and regulation of novel natural products from Streptomyces bacteria. I looked at how these bacteria sense and respond to changes in their environment to control the production of antibiotics as part of competition defence. I focussed on exploiting these systems through genome editing to switch on and isolate new compounds that have bioactivity against a variety of clinically relevant pathogens.

In my current project I’m using transposon mutagenesis and genome-wide sequencing to identify new antibacterial targets with a focus on bacteria that survive inside human cells, such as Salmonella. This is a part of the collaborative END2AMR project aiming to bring together academic research, SMEs, industrial and non-profit organisations to translate work from all partners into future patient treatments.

Key publications

Noble, K., Devine, R., Stevenson, C., de Oliveira Martins, C., Saalbach, G., McDonald, H. P., Hems, E. S., Wilkinson, B., & Hutchings, M. I. (2025). Redox control of antibiotic biosynthesis. MBio, 16(9). https://doi.org/10.1128/MBIO.01369-25;

Beaton, A. D. M., Devine, R., Holmes, N. A., Som, N. F., Balis, L., Noble, K., Stringer, R., Rejzek, M., Saalbach, G., Wilkinson, B., & Hutchings, M. I. (2025). MtrAB activates ectoine production and triggers sporulation in response to osmotic stress in Streptomyces venezuelae. BioRxiv, 2025.12.19.695424. https://doi.org/10.64898/2025.12.19.695424

Noble, K., Devine, R., Wilkinson, B., & Hutchings, M. (2025). Microbe Profile: Streptomyces formicae KY5: an ANT-ibiotic factory. Microbiology (United Kingdom), 171(10), 001623. https://doi.org/10.1099/MIC.0.001623/

Feeney, M. A., Newitt, J. T., Addington, E., Algora-Gallardo, L., Allan, C., Balis, L., Birke, A. S., Castaño-Espriu, L., Charkoudian, L. K., Devine, R., Gayrard, D., Hamilton, J., Hennrich, O., Hoskisson, P. A., Keith-Baker, M., Klein, J. G., Kruasuwan, W., Mark, D. R., Mast, Y., … Hutchings, M. I. (2022). ActinoBase: tools and protocols for researchers working on Streptomyces and other filamentous actinobacteria. Microbial Genomics, 8(7). https://doi.org/10.1099/MGEN.0.000824

Devine, R., McDonald, H. P., Qin, Z., Arnold, C. J., Noble, K., Chandra, G., Wilkinson, B., & Hutchings, M. I. (2021). Re-wiring the regulation of the formicamycin biosynthetic gene cluster to enable the development of promising antibacterial compounds. Cell Chemical Biology, 28(4), 515-523.e5. https://doi.org/10.1016/J.CHEMBIOL.2020.12.011