Staff Profile

Current lab members

• James Grimshaw (Microscopy Specialist Technician - Wellcome Trust)
• Rosie Harrison (PhD student - MRC DiMeN)
• Amandeep Kaur (Technical Scientific Officer - Wellcome Trust)
• Amy Tooke (Postdoctoral Research Associate - Wellcome Trust)
• Arina Yakupova (Vacation student - Newcastle University Research Scholarship)
• Natasha Yeap (PhD student - BBSRC NEEDL)

We often find ways to support talented scientists from all career stages, please contact Charles if you would like to discuss potential positions and opportunities to join the team.

Past lab members: Gauri Paduthol (PhD student - EMBO).

Alumni: Caroline Elaine (MRes), Theodora Galazi (UG), Kirthi Parameswaran (UG), Oleg Klementiev (UG), Zama Shiaar (UG), Elizabeth Cordell (Vacation student).

PhD thesis examined: 'Functional studies of the recU-ponA operon of Bacillus subtilis: effects of cell shape on chromosome dynamics' by Dr Mary Salliss.

Research career and awards

• BBSRC NEEDL PhD studentship (2026 - present)
• Newcastle University Research Scholarship (present)
• EMBO Scientific Exchange Grant (host lab, 2026)
• MRC DiMeN PhD studentship (2025 - present)
• Royal Society Research Grant (2024 - 2025)
• Royal Society Partnership Grant (2024 - 2025)
• Microbiology Society Harry Smith Vacation Studentship (2024)
• Wellcome Trust Early-Career Award (2024 - present)
• Postdoctoral Research Associate (2019 - 2023, Murray lab)
• Research Assistant (2017 - 2019, Murray lab)
• PhD Candidate (2014 - 2017, Krasnogor lab)
• Research Assistant (2013 - 2014, Elati / Radvanyi labs)
• Erasmus Visiting Researcher (2013)

Education

• PhD in Synthetic Biology (University of Newcastle, UK)
• Master of Science, Systems and Synthetic Biology (Évry Paris-Saclay University, France & University of Nottingham, UK)
• Maitrise of Science, Bioengineering and Computer Science (Évry Paris-Saclay University, France)
• Bachelor of Science, Biological Sciences (University Henri Poincare & Évry Paris-Saclay University, France)

List of publications on Google Scholar: Click here.

I am a Wellcome Trust Early-Career Fellow working on bacterial DNA damage repair mechanisms at the Centre for Bacterial Cell Biology (Faculty of Medical Sciences / Biosciences Institute). My lab specialises in deciphering fundamental damage repair mechanisms in Gram-positive bacteria using Bacillus subtilis as model organism and Staphylococcus aureus as model pathogen. We also recently started working with Escherichia coli and Pseudomonas aeruginosa as model Gram-negative pathogens.

Bacterial infections are a global health threat and pathogens become increasingly resistant to our last-resort antimicrobials. Treatment with several classes of antibiotics leads to generation of reactive oxygen species causing DNA damage such as single- and double-strand DNA breaks, and these lesions can lead to cell death if not repaired. However, bacteria can evade DNA damage and at present, we lack a full understanding of the critical repair pathways underpinning this process.

The Winterhalter lab uses genetics, genomics, fluorescence microscopy and biochemistry to uncover the full repertoire of essential proteins involved in DNA repair in bacterial model organisms and pathogens, ultimately to determine the critical molecular events culminating in DNA damage repair. Driven by fundamental science, we also investigate the requirement of repair pathways for virulence and their potential to be targeted by small molecule inhibitors. In the future, these essential repair processes could serve as efficient targets for alternative antimicrobial drug development.

• CMB3000 - Undergraduate Research project
• MMB8098 - MRes Research project

• Articles

  • Guyet A, Ruiz Campoy R, Manja P, Schramm FD, Pelliciari S, Fenyk S, Li Y, Winterhalter C, Ilangovan A, Murray H. Bacillus subtilis DnaB forms multiple protein-protein interactions essential for DNA replication initiation. Nucleic Acids Research 2026, 54(12).
  • Winterhalter C, Stratton KJ, Fenyk S, Murray H. Rescuing the bacterial replisome at a nick requires recombinational repair and helicase reloading. Nature Communications 2025, 16, 11633.
  • Gaimster H, Stevens D, Grimshaw J, Hubbard J, Mickiewicz K, Murray H, Winterhalter C. Conflicts between the DNA replication and repair machineries promote cell death in Gram-positive bacteria. Microbiology 2025, 171(11), 001633.
  • Winterhalter C, Pelliciari S, Stevens D, Fenyk S, Marchand E, Cronin N, Soultanas P, Costa T, Ilangovan A, Murray H. The DNA replication initiation protein DnaD recognises a specific strand of the Bacillus subtilis chromosome origin. Nucleic Acids Research 2023, 51(9), 4322-4340.
  • Pelliciari S, Bodet-Lefevre S, Fenyk S, Stevens D, Winterhalter C, Schramm FD, Pintar S, Burnham DR, Merces G, Richardson TT, Tashiro Y, Hubbard J, Yardimci H, Ilangovan A, Murray H. The bacterial replication origin BUS promotes nucleobase capture. Nature Communications 2023, 14(1), 8339.
  • Winterhalter C, Stevens D, Fenyk S, Pelliciari S, Marchand E, Soultanas P, Ilangovan A, Murray H. SirA inhibits the essential DnaA:DnaD interaction to block helicase recruitment during Bacillus subtilis sporulation. Nucleic Acids Research 2023, 51(9), 4302-4321.
  • Tellechea-Luzardo J, Winterhalter C, Widera P, Kozyra J, de Lorenzo V, Krasnogor N. Linking Engineered Cells to Their Digital Twins: A Version Control System for Strain Engineering. ACS synthetic biology 2020, 9(3), 536-545.
  • Martin E, Williams HEL, Pitoulias M, Stevens D, Winterhalter C, Craggs TD, Murray H, Searle MS, Soultanas P. DNA replication initiation in Bacillus subtilis: structural and functional characterization of the essential DnaA-DnaD interaction. Nucleic Acids Research 2019, 47(4), 2101-2112.
  • Winterhalter C, Nicolle R, Louis A, To C, Radvanyi F, Elati M. PEPPER: cytoscape app for protein complex expansion using protein–protein interaction networks. Bioinformatics 2014, 30(23), 3419-3420.
  • Winterhalter C, Widera P, Krasnogor N. JEPETTO: a Cytoscape plugin for gene set enrichment and topological analysis based on interaction networks. Bioinformatics 2014, 30(7), 1029-1030.

• Book Chapter

  • Gaimster H, Winterhalter C, Koh A, Murray H. Visualising the replisome, chromosome breaks, and replication restart in Bacillus subtilis. In: Leake M, ed. Chromosome Architecture. Berlin: Springer Nature, 2022, pp.263-276.

• Software

  • Winterhalter C. Extracting sequencing read frequency per chromosome position from .BAM files. [program]. Zenodo, 2025.
  • Winterhalter C, Murray H. Automated Quickchange Program. [program]. Geneva: Zenodo, 2021.
  • Winterhalter C, Nicolle R, Louis A, To C, Radvanyi F, Elati M. PEPPER. [program]. Cytoscape, 2014.
  • Winterhalter C, Widera P, Krasnogor N. JEPETTO. [program]. Cytoscape, 2014.