Plant and Microbial Biosciences

Program affiliation
Molecular Microbiology and Microbial Pathogenesis
Computational and Systems Biology
Molecular Cell Biology
Plant and Microbial Biosciences

Research summary
Role of the human gut microbiome in health and disease, notably childhood undernutrition and obesity

Key words
Gut microbiome; systems biology; postnatal development; childhood malnutrition; global health; gnotobiotic animal models; metabolic regulation; food webs; gut-brain axis; gut barrier/immune function; microbiome-targeted therapeutics

Program affiliation
Biochemistry Biophysics and Structural Biology
Computational and Systems Biology
Molecular Cell Biology
Plant and Microbial Biosciences

Research summary
Understand how function is encoded into disordered sequences using a combination of computational and experimental approaches

Key words

Program affiliation
Plant and Microbial Biosciences
Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

Research summary
Understanding patterns and mechanisms of long-term ecosystem dynamics under changing climatic conditions

Key words
ecosystem ecology, quaternary paleoecology, climatic change and biotic response, soil and sediment biogeochemistry

Program affiliation
Molecular Microbiology and Microbial Pathogenesis
Plant and Microbial Biosciences
Biochemistry Biophysics and Structural Biology
Molecular Cell Biology

Research summary
Interdisciplinary approach combining genetics, genomics, biochemistry, structural biology, high-resolution imaging, animal models, clinical studies and combinatorial chemistry to determine key aspects of bacterial pathogenesis and apply our knowledge to development of new therapeutics.

Key words
antibiotic-sparing therapeutics, host-pathogen interactions, bacterial pathogenesis, drug and vaccine development, multi-drug resistant E. coli, MRSA, Enterococcus, Acinetobacter, Klebsiella, urinary tract infections (UTI)

Program affiliation
Plant and Microbial Biosciences
Biochemistry Biophysics and Structural Biology

Research summary
Exploring regulatory networks in metabolism - structural biology and biochemistry of plants and microbes

Key words
biochemistry, enzymology, plant biology, protein engineering, protein structure, structural biology

Program affiliation
Plant and Microbial Biosciences
Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Molecular Genetics and Genomics

Research summary
Identifying deep similarities among plants as apparently disparate as rice, wheat, maize, and the other cereals

Key words
plant evolution; evo-devo; genomics; phylogeny

Program affiliation
Plant and Microbial Biosciences
Molecular Microbiology and Microbial Pathogenesis

Research summary
Gene regulation and biogenesis of extracellular components in bacteria

Key words
bacteria, gene expression, protein structure, plant biosensors, cytochromes

Program affiliation
Plant and Microbial Biosciences
Molecular Microbiology and Microbial Pathogenesis
Molecular Genetics and Genomics

Research summary
Molecular genetic analysis of disease development in Pseudomonas syringae-Arabidopsis interactions

Key words
plant-microbe interactions, bacterial pathogenesis, auxin, IAA, Type III effector protein, genetics, plant biology

Program affiliation
Molecular Microbiology and Microbial Pathogenesis
Plant and Microbial Biosciences
Biochemistry Biophysics and Structural Biology
Computational and Systems Biology

Research summary
Human immunodeficiency virus-host interactions

Key words

Program affiliation
Molecular Microbiology and Microbial Pathogenesis
Plant and Microbial Biosciences
Molecular Cell Biology
Biochemistry Biophysics and Structural Biology

Research summary
We study how bacterial defend themselves from their viral predators, bacteriophage.

Key words
bacteria, phage, bacteriophage, virus