Staff Profile

Research Career

• Royal Society Research Grant (2024 - present)
• Royal Society Partnership Grant (2024 - present)
• Wellcome Trust Early-Career Award (2022 - 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 lab)
• Erasmus Visiting Researcher (2013)

Education

• PhD in Synthetic Biology (University of Newcastle, UK)
• Master of Science, Systems and Synthetic Biology (University of Evry, France & University of Nottingham, UK)
• Maitrise of Science, Bioengineering and Computer Science (University of Evry, France)
• Bachelor of Science, Biological Sciences (University Henri Poincare/University of Evry, 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 DNA damage repair mechanisms in Gram-positive bacteria including the model pathogen Staphylococcus aureus.

S. aureus is the leading Gram-positive bacterium causing death from bacterial infections worldwide and is becoming increasingly resistant to our last-resort antibiotics. 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 damages 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 aims to uncover the full repertoire of essential proteins involved in DNA repair in S. aureus and to determine the critical interactions leading to 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.

• Articles

  • Winterhalter C, Fenyk S, Murray H. Rescuing bacterial genome replication: essential functions to repair a double-strand break and restart DNA synthesis. bioRxiv 2025. Submitted.
  • Gaimster H, Stevens D, Hubbard J, Mickiewicz K, Murray H, Winterhalter C. Conflicts between the DNA replication and repair machineries promote cell death in Gram-positive bacteria. bioRxiv 2024. Submitted.
  • 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, 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.