Mark Holmes leads a research group whose current focus of research is on antimicrobial resistance. His lab was responsible for the discovery of a new livestock-associated MRSA harboring a mecA homologue (now named mecC). The new MRSA was discovered during an epidemiological project looking at the transmission of S. aureus in dairy cows by one of our PhD students, Laura Garcia Alvarez. The original isolate was whole genome sequenced and analysed in collaboration with the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute by Matt Holden and colleagues. We subsequently obtained funding from Defra and the MRC to investigate the discovery further. We are currently undertaking studies to establish the prevalence and diversity of the new MRSA using whole genome sequencing and other techniques. In a collaboration with Prof Alexander Tomasz’s lab at Rockefeller University we have also looked at the function of the PBP2a produced by the mecC gene.

This work is funded by the BBSRC, Defra, and the MRC.

We are currently holding large grants to work on livestock associated MRSA in the UK and China, and on investigations of the dynamics of antimicrobial resistance genes in complex bacterial populations.

Mark Holmes also has interests in clinical research and evidence-based veterinary medicine and has published a number of papers and books in these areas.