Gustavo Caballero Flores
University of Wisconsin-Madison, WI·Microbiology & Immunology·Early-career
Infectious diarrhea remains a leading cause of illness and death among children and people with weakened immune systems worldwide. Part of the reason it is still poorly understood is practical: there have been few animal models that reproduce what infection looks like in newborns or in patients whose adaptive immune system does not work.
- Fields
Microbiology & Immunology
Biology
Medicine & Clinical Research
- Topics
Citrobacter rodentium
Salmonella Typhimurium
enteric infection
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Apr 2027
What they work on
- Identify bacterial factors that Citrobacter rodentium needs to establish bacteremia, bloodstream infection, in newborn mice, using genome-wide mutant screens followed by functional testing of candidates in live animals.
- Test whether the virulence factors required for lethal systemic infection in neonates differ from those required for initial colonization of the intestine.
- Determine whether the antibody IgG protects against enteric disease in both the neonatal and adult gut, and identify compensatory mechanisms of pathogen clearance in immunodeficient mice lacking IgG.
- Extend key findings to Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium, a human pathogen, to distinguish general principles of pathogenesis and host immunity from organism-specific features.
More about the research
This project uses newly developed newborn and immunodeficient mouse models to ask how gut bacteria cause disease in these especially vulnerable hosts, how the infection escapes the intestine into the bloodstream, and what immune defenses hold it back.
Why it matters
Infectious diarrhea and bloodstream infection remain serious public health problems for children and immunocompromised adults, and treatment strategies rest on an incomplete picture of how these infections actually unfold in such patients. By defining the bacterial factors that drive spread beyond the intestine and the antibody defenses that contain it, this work could inform better treatment and prevention approaches for these groups.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Johanna Elfenbein
University of Wisconsin-Madison, WI·Microbiology & Immunology
Test whether the membrane protein gene yeiH is needed for Salmonella Typhimurium to survive during infection, using animal models of colitis and sepsis.
Caitlyn Holmes
University of Minnesota, MN·Microbiology & Immunology·Early-career
Define how macrophages in the spleen, immune cells that engulf bacteria, restrict Klebsiella pneumoniae during bloodstream infection, a site rarely studied in Gram-negative disease.
Leigh Knodler
University of Vermont, VT·Microbiology & Immunology
Determine whether nine genes in the 40-kilobase type III secretion gene cluster on the Providencia alcalifaciens plasmid drive invasion of host cells, combining computational prediction, in vitro biochemistry and infection of cultured non-phagocytic cells.
The school
University of Wisconsin-Madison: 91 labs on PI Pages, $1.9B a year on research, 854 research doctorates a year.
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