Joe Nabarro (He/Him)

I am a chemical biologist at the University of York developing molecular, imaging and computational tools to reveal and ultimately control dynamic biological interfaces. My work spans Gram-negative bacterial outer membranes and cell-instructive biomaterials, united by a central question: how does spatial organisation at a biological surface determine its behaviour?

My bacterial research focuses on lipopolysaccharide (LPS), the principal component of the Gram-negative outer membrane, and outer membrane vesicles (OMVs). By developing novel, innovative selective metabolic and bioorthogonal labelling strategies, I have been able to chemically distinguish different generations and glycoforms of LPS and follow their organisation at single-cell and nanoscale resolution. This work revealed that interactions within the conserved Lipid A anchor restrict LPS mobility, while localised insertion, persistent segregation of pre-existing and newly inserted LPS, and OMV-mediated removal allow the outer membrane to renew even as bacterial growth slows. These discoveries led to a corresponding-author paper in Nature Communications and a first-author paper in The EMBO Journal.

I am now building on this research to understand how distinct LPS surface states influence OMV biogenesis and antimicrobial protection, with the longer-term aim of informing new outer-membrane-targeting strategies and OMV-based technologies. In parallel, I lead an application-driven project in the Spicer Group developing light-responsive, peptide-functionalised hydrogels that control neuronal adhesion and neurite outgrowth. Across both areas, my aim is to create chemical tools that move beyond observing biological organisation towards manipulating it with spatial and temporal precision.

Core Expertise

• Chemical and analytical science: Multistep organic and carbohydrate synthesis; Fmoc solid-phase and flow-based peptide synthesis; peptide and protein modification; bioconjugation; bioorthogonal-probe development and live-cell labelling; advanced characterisation using NMR, LC–MS(/MS), analytical HPLC, fluorescence assays and gel-based methods; and light-responsive, peptide-functionalised biomaterials.

• Cellular and microbiological systems: Gram-negative outer-membrane biology, LPS and OMVs; bacterial manipulation and recombinant protein production; extensive experience with model organisms and pathogenic isolates under Containment Level 2 and enhanced CL2 conditions; and eukaryotic cell biology spanning primary-neuron isolation and culture, mammalian cell culture, and primary and immortalised immune-cell models.

• Imaging, biophysics and computation: advanced live-cell and super-resolution fluorescence microscopy, including multicolour dSTORM, 3D-SIM², FRAP and single-particle tracking; confocal and spinning-disk imaging; and bespoke MATLAB and Python pipelines for automated image quantification, spatial statistics, clustering, cross-correlation and mechanistic modelling.