Investigators and Program Directors
Kathleen A. McDonough
Research Scientist, Wadsworth Center, Mycobacterial Disease
Associate Professor, School of Public Health, Biomedical Sciences
Ph.D., Stanford University
Postdoctoral training, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Albert
Einstein College of Medicine
Research Interests
The focus of this laboratory is bacterial pathogenesis, or the means by which bacteria cause disease. We are primarily interested in two well known pathogens: Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the bacterium that causes TB and Yersinia pestis, the cause of the bubonic plague.
M. tuberculosis is an air-borne pathogen that remains one of the world's leading killers. Studies in my laboratory focus on the early stages of TB lung infection, with the goal of identifying the specific genes and properties of virulent TB bacteria that enable it to establish infection. Ultimately, we expect that the products of these genes will be useful targets for vaccine development. Two areas of current study are the interaction of tubercle bacilli with host macrophages and with lung epithelial cells at the cellular and molecular levels. We're particularly interested in learning how TB bacteria enter into and survive within these cells. We are also trying to determine which genes they turn on once they're inside. We use a variety of techniques to address these questions, ranging from electron microscopy to molecular genetics.
Little is know about what differentiates Y. pestis from Y pseudotuberculosis, a closely related but less virulent pathogen that cannot be transmitted by fleas, and this constitutes the second major area of interest within my laboratory. Currently, we are exploiting the presence of a Y. pestis insertion sequence (IS100) in a subgroup of a Y. pseudotuberculosis to explore the genetic differences between these two pathogens. We have found that this insertion sequence is linked to an island of virulence-associated genes in both of these species and we are investigating the potential role of IS100 in the molecular evolution of Y. pestis.
Contact Information
E-mail: kathleen.mcdonough@wadsworth.org