Left to right and back to front: Todd Gray, Easton Reagan, Kass Sjostrom, Shawn Gianola, Emma Gordon, Tayler Farrington, Jordene Wynter, Amol Pohane, Jill Canestrari.
Todd Gray, PhD
Todd likes to dream up new areas of investigation, and tinkers at the bench just enough to give those projects an initial push before handing them off. He enjoys the relative ease of Mycobacterium smegmatis as a model organism over Mus musculus! These little models are great for uncovering the secrets of mycobacteria.
Keith Derbyshire, PhD
We study mycobacteria and use molecular genetic approaches to investigate: global gene expression, at both transcriptional and translational levels; the mechanism of distributive conjugal transfer; and synthetic genetic interactions.
Jill Canestrari uses Next Gen sequencing and reporter assays to examine gene expression in Mycobacterium smegmatis. She also generates and characterizes mutants of Mycobacterium abscessus to dissect secretion system regulation in this non-tuberculous mycobacterium.
Tayler Farrington
Tayler is an APHL Fellow in our lab working on a project that involves a likely calcium binding protein and calcium dynamics in mycobacteria. Tayler’s work has required training in protein purification and characterization methods as well as in live cell fluorescence microscopy.
Shawn Gianola
Shawn is a research scientist involved in characterizing the mechanism and effects of cell-cell contact between non-kin mycobacteria. Shawn’s work includes functionally characterizing three proteins encoded by the mid-locus (mid=mating identity) of Mycobacterium smegmatis as well as dissecting the transcriptional networks induced by non-kin cell contact.
Emma Gordon Senior Laboratory Technician
Emma has initiated our work into a transcription factor that is associated with virulence in pathogenic mycobacteria and is required for conjugation in our non-pathogenic mycobacteria. She is defining the signaling network and identifying new activities required in this gene transfer process.
Shawn Gianola
Shawn is a research scientist involved in characterizing the mechanism and effects of cell-cell contact between non-kin mycobacteria. Shawn’s work includes functionally characterizing three proteins encoded by the mid-locus (mid=mating identity) of Mycobacterium smegmatis as well as dissecting the transcriptional networks induced by non-kin cell contact.
Easton Reagan, APHL Fellow
Easton is investigating distributive conjugal transfer, focusing on the “kin” recognition system within mycobacteria and how genetic alterations in recipient and donor strains affects gene transfer ability. This work will begin to unravel how mycobacteria recognize and distinguish one another.
Kass Sjostrom
Kass is graduate student whose project is focused on a regulatory protein, EspM, as a gatekeeper of contact responses that induce ESX secretion systems. Kass’s project integrates undefined signal transduction inputs from multiple sources to then regulate the WhiB6 transcriptional activator protein.
Jordene Wynter
Jordene is an undergraduate student who has been working on the regulation of whiB6 gene transcription by EspM in Mycobacterium smegmatis. Jordene has been learning and training under the mentorship of Emma Gordon on this project.