Muhammad Zafar
Emory University, GA·Microbiology & Immunology
Hospital-acquired infections with drug-resistant bacteria affect enormous numbers of patients, and Klebsiella pneumoniae is one of the worst offenders: a gram-negative bacterium that has become resistant to many antibiotics. Before it causes pneumonia or bloodstream infection, it usually lives quietly in the gut.
- Fields
Microbiology & Immunology
Biology
Medicine & Clinical Research
- Topics
Klebsiella pneumoniae
hospital-acquired infection
antibiotic resistance
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through May 2029
What they work on
- Determine the distinct roles of the two genetically separate ethanolamine utilization (eut) gene clusters of Klebsiella pneumoniae in using ethanolamine, a membrane and diet byproduct, as a nutrient in the mouse gut.
- Define the molecular mechanism by which ethanolamine metabolism gives K. pneumoniae a fitness advantage against resident gut bacteria, using the murine colonization model and fecal shedding as a readout.
- Dissect the regulatory mechanism controlling expression of the K. pneumoniae type VI secretion system, a contact-dependent bacterial killing machine, specifically within the gastrointestinal tract.
- Test whether type VI secretion lets K. pneumoniae overcome colonization resistance from the resident microbiota, combining In-seq transposon mutant screens with metagenomic sequencing of the gut community.
More about the research
Epidemiology points to the gastrointestinal tract as the main reservoir from which this bacterium both invades its own host and spreads to other patients. Why this organism is so good at settling into a gut already packed with resident microbes has been hard to study, because no practical animal model existed.
Why it matters
Klebsiella pneumoniae is a leading cause of hospital-acquired infections that are often multi-drug resistant and hard to treat. Because the gut is the reservoir that feeds both infection and patient-to-patient spread, identifying the bacterial genes and nutrient and weapon systems needed for gut colonization could yield targets for blocking colonization in hospitalized patients and lowering the disease burden without new antibiotics.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Anne-Marie Krachler
University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, TX·Microbiology & Immunology
Test whether host fecal proteins bound to the EHEC surface, including serpins such as alpha-1 antitrypsin and serpinE2, raise infectivity, by adding individual and combined proteins in controlled exposure and challenge experiments in zebrafish larvae.
Jennifer Melinda Bomberger
Dartmouth College, NH·Microbiology & Immunology
Test whether TsiT, a T6SS immunity protein that resembles LysR-type gene regulators, acts as a transcriptional regulator that controls Pseudomonas aeruginosa biofilm formation.
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.
The school
Emory University: 70 labs on PI Pages, $1.2B a year on research, 286 research doctorates a year.
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