Project at a glance

Pathogenesis of biofilm-associated infections

Biofilms are associated with the majority of chronic infections, are often polymicrobial in nature, and are phenotypically tolerant to antimicrobials.

We apply a variety of genetic and genomic approaches to interrogate both monomicrobial and polymicrobial Enterococcus faecalis biofilm pathogenesis, including transposon screens in vitro and in vivo using animal models and transposon-sequencing. We have established combinatorial CRISPRi tools for E. faecalis, enabling us to silence any combination of genes within biofilms. This tool is well-validated in laboratory systems, and we are applying it to biofilm infection. Finally, we are very interested in how E. faecalis responds to the environment at both the transcriptional and post-transcriptional level.

For these studies, we use a variety of genome-wide based expression tools including RNA-sequencing, examining codon bias in genes responding to specific environments, and linking codon bias to tRNA modifications that influence the epitranscriptomic response to the environment.