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