Research Area: Microbiota and Microbiomes

Climate change dramatically impacts freshwater ecosystems, which are becoming warmer, more acidic, and nutrient rich. The collective influence of the microbial inhabitants of these ecosystems, despite their tiny size, can have an immense impact on water quality. However, we lack fundamental knowledge on the ecology[...]

Research in my lab probes the environmental, structural and physiological basis of bacterial survival. The majority of earth’s microbes exist in a non-growing, surival state, making it important to better understand the mechanisms underpinning this physiological state. We primarily use the environmental zoonotic pathogen, Coxiella burnetii (causative agent[...]

The Feaga lab is focused on how bacteria maintain protein synthesis capacity under stress. We aim to identify factors that interact with the ribosome and prevent stalling, and to understand the impact of ribosome stalling on cell physiology. In particular, we are interested in how[...]

Trevor’s research examines the symbiotic interaction between plant roots and arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi, an association critical for mineral nutrient acquisition in widespread plant lineages. To address questions regarding the regulation and development of host-microbe symbiotic programming, he aims to spatially resolve plant and fungal gene[...]

Janelle’s research project aims to understand how diet affects the microbiome, and how these diet-dependent microbiome changes affect the immune system- particularly CD8+ T cells. Her work also uses flow cytometry and sequencing to look at how diet and microbiome changes in early life affects[...]

Fungi are responsible for devastating crop infestations that threaten global food supplies and diseases that result in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of individuals each year. We use genetic and genomic techniques spanning from classical molecular biology to high-throughput functional genomics to understand how[...]

Macrophages are susceptible to HIV-1 infection and are resistant to virally-induced cell death. Alveolar macrophages (AM) in particular are known to be extremely long-lived and self-renewing, and have been shown to be both permissive to HIV-1 infection and persist in the face of Anti-Retroviral Therapy[...]

Why do some gut bacteria stick to one host species, while others seem to hop around freely between them? What changes in their genomes when they move between hosts? And how can we begin to develop the data and tools we need to study these[...]

Shaun’s research focuses on the development of sequencing technologies to better elucidate host-virus interactions using enteric viruses (rotaviruses and mammalian orthroreoviruses). By augmenting spatial transcriptomic sequencing platforms, he aims to understand how the host reacts to viral infections across space and time and how these[...]

Iris explores the ways that vertebrate hosts cope with infections from the diverse community of parasites they encounter throughout their lives. Specifically, she looks at signatures of selection on the immune genes of lizards, and correlate those signatures with the lizard’s parasite community. Iris is[...]