Edith Machowski

My path to science was not straight forward. I studied chemical engineering for two weeks. Don't feel sorry for me - after those two weeks I landed myself in hospital after a diagnosis of leukaemia. Yes, it can be cured. No fun, but it can be done. But then, healing sick people seemed a lots more meaningful than engineering, and so I put my scientific aptitude into the medical field. I ended up with a degree in Chemistry and Medical Biochemistry. And my path took me on to Microbiology, specifically Mycobacteriology. In South Africa, Tuberculosis - caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis - and the HIV co-epidemic exact a heavy toll on the population. And the Economy. Morbidity, mortality, and a generation of children being brought up by their grandparents. The disease is treatable with affordable antibiotics, but maladministration and patient non-compliance is leading to ever increasing frequencies of drug-resistant strains. Our confidence in curing Tuberculosis with antibiotics is under threat. That is where mycobacteriophages become of interest. They are nature's anti-mycobacterial Trojan horse, entering the bacterium and resulting in cell death. Throughout my years in the field, I have gathered experience in a range of methods: microbiology at BSL II and BSL III biosafety level, molecular biology for genetic analysis but also design of genomic targeted mutagenesis, bioinformatic online analysis and design, and most recently mycobacteriology experience in the laboratory and genomic annotation. This is an exciting time when antibiotics and phage therapy converge to complement each other.