November 21, 2014

In a collaborative effort headed up by the Hogan lab here at Dartmouth, and with the efforts of Mitch Sogin's group at the Marine Biological Laboratory, we participated in a study to assess the fungi present in the cystic fibrosis lung using culture-independent deep-sequencing approaches.  Laura Filkins (shown here), a student in my lab, participated in this study.

November 12, 2014

We recently published a collaborative paper with Albert Siryaporn and Zemer Gitai at Princeton. The manuscript, published in PNAS, describes the role of a surface protein called PilY1 in the ability of Pseudomonas aeruginosa to initiate "surface-induced virulence", wherein P. aeruginosa grown on a surface expresses virulence factors faster and to a higher degree compared to planktonically-grown bacteria.  Work from our group by Sherry Kuchma, a senior scientist (shown here), had previously shown that PilY1 plays a role in the initiation of biofilm formation and surface swarming, and the surface-dependent stimulation of cyclic-di-GMP levels.