What They Are Doing Now: Todd Smith (PhD 2009)

Todd Smith (PhD, 2009) After studying the regulation of flagellar genes in Helicobacter pylori with Dr. Tim Hoover, Todd was awarded an American Society for Microbiology Post-doctoral Fellowship in Infectious Disease and Public Health Microbiology. This two-year fellowship must be carried out at one of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention's national laboratories. Todd chose to work at the CDC in Atlanta with Dr. Charles Rupprecht in the Rabies Program as part of the Division of High Consequence Pathogens and Pathology.

What They Are Doing Now: Michael Gatlin (PhD 2009)

Michael Gatlin (Ph.D. 2009) Michael’s dissertation research with Dan Colley was on host immunogenetics in relationship to resistance to reinfection by schistosomes. His work followed up on 40 years of research by Dan on the immunology of schistosomiasis. As fate would have it, Michael’s postdoctoral research in Nancy Manley's lab at UGA on the developmental biology of the thymus was in the same area as Dan’s work 41 years ago, i.e. lymphocyte development in the thymus!

What They Are Doing Now: Laura E. Williams (PhD 2009)

Laura E. Williams (PhD 2009). After finishing her PhD with Dr. Anne Summers, Laura started her postdoctoral research in the laboratory of Jennifer Wernegreen's Laboratory (originally located at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Mass., but since moved to the Institute for Genome Sciences and Policy, Duke University, Durham, N.C.). Her research focuses on genome evolution in Blochmannia, which are bacterial endosymbionts of carpenter ants.

Vincent J. Starai

Associate Professor

By employing a powerful in vivo and in vitro model system of eukaryotic membrane fusion, my laboratory will investigate the biochemistry of eukaryotic membrane fusion, identify and biochemically characterize bacterial effectors capable of modulating membrane fusion, and finally analyze these activities within the context of pathogenesis.

Education:
  • Ph.D. in Microbiology, University of Wisconsin-Madison (2004)
  • Postdoctoral Researcher in Biochemistry, Dartmouth Medical School (2009)
Research Areas:
Microbe-Host Interactions
Molecular Microbiology
Labs (via personnel):
Vincent J. Starai
Labs:
Starai

Mark A. Schell

Emeritus Professor of Microbiology

We focus on uncharacterized niche colonization genes in plant and animal pathogens in the Burkholderia group and in lactic acid bacteria inhabiting the human digestive tract.

Ellen L. Neidle

Professor

We use the easy genetic system of a  soil bacterium, Acinetobacter baylyi ADP1, to study diverse aspects of gene expression and chromosomal rearrangements. This research has implications for medical issues (gene amplification), environmental issues (bioremediation), biotechnology/bioenergy (conversion of lignin to biofuels), and evolution (new methods for experimental evolution).

 

 

 

Education:
  • Ph.D. in Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology, Yale University
  • B.S. in Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry, Yale University
Research Areas:
Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology
Bioinformatics and -omics/Computational Biology
Microbial Physiology
Molecular Microbiology
Labs (via personnel):
Ellen L. Neidle
Labs:
Neidle
Selected Publications:

Elliott, K.T., Cuff, L.E., and Neidle, E.L. (2013) Copy number change: evolving views on gene amplification. Future Microbiology 8:887-899.

Alanazi, A.M., Neidle, E.L., and Momany, C. (2013) The DNA-binding domain of BenM reveals the structural basis for the recognition of a T-N11-A sequence motif by LysR-type transcriptional regulators. Acta Crystallographica Section D-Biological Crystallography 69:1995-2007.

Seaton, S.C., Elliott, K.T., Cuff, L.E., Laniohan, N.S., Patel, P.R., and Neidle, E.L. (2012) Genome-wide selection for increased copy number in Acinetobacter baylyi ADP1: locus and context-dependent variation in gene amplification. Molecular Microbiology 83:520-535.

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