Current Projects

My contributions to all my current projects are being performed in Arthur Grossman and Devaki Bhaya’s laboratory at the Carnegie Institution for Science. I am supported by funding from the National Science Foundation as part of an NSF-BBSRC collaborative grant awarded to Alison Smith, Chris Howe, Seppe Kuehn, Devaki Bhaya and Arthur Grossman’s labs.

How do cells move and physically interact to construct dynamic biofilms?
Collaborators: Andrey Malkovskiy, Victoria Calatrava, Carlos Rivas, SLAC scientists (Lydia-Marie Joubert and others), EMSL scientists (Amar Parvate and others).

We’re using time lapse video microscopy to image motile cells and particle tracking algorithms to determine how they respond to changing stimuli. At the collective level we are interested in how cells of different species cooperate physically and how that alters the biofilm-like structures that they form. At the subcellular level, and with the help of scientists at SLAC and an EMSL exploratory grant, we are investigating the physical interactions between cells and the structures used for motility and cell attachment.

Can we disentangle nutrient exchange in hot spring biofilms using a synthetic community approach?
Collaborators: Amanda Shelton, Carlos Rivas, EMSL scientists (Mary Lipton and others).

Taking a bottom-up approach to understanding microbial communities, we are studying how major microbial mat members grow together in coculture. We are interested in the metabolites that are transferred between these microbes and how their gene expression is altered upon association. We believe that our findings from simplified communities will help to determine the role of different species in the natural hot spring mat environment.

Can we isolate, grow, sequence, and manipulate new species from thermophilic bacterial communities?
Collaborators: Amanda Shelton, Brian Yu, Zeqian Li, Carlos Rivas, Victoria Calatrava.

To really understand the charismatic extremophiles in the hot springs of Yellowstone, we are isolating and axenically culturing several species from the mat community. We hope to assess the parameter landscape that leads to their robust growth and to characterize their metabolic potential. We also aim to sequence several isolates to link their phenotypes to their gene content, and are investigating the potential for interrogating their genomes through targeted genetic manipulation.