Kevin Blake
Program: Plant and Microbial Biosciences
Current advisor: Gautam Dantas, PhD
Undergraduate university: Hartwick College, 2017
Enrollment year: 2018
Research summary
Microbial ecology and antibiotic resistance
Tetracycline destructases are a class of tetracycline-inactivating enzyme that have been identified in numerous environmental metagenomes, but with limited occurrence in pathogens or clinical isolates. Proactive study of these resistance genes before they become of clinical concern will allow for mitigation of the threat they pose.
Graduate publications
Williford EE, DeAngelo CM, Blake KS, Kumar H, Lam KK, Jones KV, Tolia NH, Dantas G, Wencewicz TA. 2023 Structure-Based Design of Bisubstrate Tetracycline Destructase Inhibitors That Block Flavin Redox Cycling. J Med Chem, 66(6):3917-33. PMCID: PMC10099279
Kumar H, Williford EE, Blake KS, Virgin-Downey B, Dantas G, Wencewicz TA, Tolia NH.. 2023 Structure of anhydrotetracycline-bound Tet(X6) reveals the mechanism for inhibition of type 1 tetracycline destructases. Commun Biol, 6(1):423. PMCID: PMC10106456
Talat A, Blake KS, Dantas G, Khan AU. 2023 Metagenomic Insight into Microbiome and Antibiotic Resistance Genes of High Clinical Concern in Urban and Rural Hospital Wastewater of Northern India Origin: a Major Reservoir of Antimicrobial Resistance. Microbiol Spectr, 11(2):e0410222. PMCID: PMC10100738
Blake KS, Choi J, Dantas G. 2021 Approaches for characterizing and tracking hospital-associated multidrug-resistant bacteria. Cell Mol Life Sci, 78(6):2585-06