Andrew Bridges
Carnegie Mellon University, PA·Microbiology & Immunology
Bacteria often live in biofilms, which are communities encased in a slimy matrix. Biofilms shield bacteria from viruses that attack bacteria (bacteriophages), from host immune cells, and from antibiotics.
- Fields
Microbiology & Immunology
Biochemistry
Biophysics
- Topics
lysis sensing
biofilm
Vibrio cholerae
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through May 2030
What they work on
- Biochemically characterize the lysis-sensing receptor and its signal in Vibrio cholerae to learn how detecting the death of related cells triggers formation of protective biofilms.
- Determine how lysis signaling works in uniform, spatially structured and multi-species bacterial communities, combining laboratory experiments with theoretical modeling.
- Identify lysis-sensing pathways in additional clinically relevant bacteria using the lab's high-throughput imaging approaches, and uncover the molecular mechanisms behind them.
- Explore defense responses beyond the biofilm lifecycle that bacteria activate when they detect signals released by lysed cells.
More about the research
This makes them notoriously hard to remove in hospitals and industry. How bacteria judge that they are under threat, and decide to build a biofilm, is not well understood. The lab recently discovered one answer, which it calls "lysis sensing." When related bacteria burst open and die (lysis), they release a signal. Surviving cells detect that signal and respond by forming protective biofilms. The mechanism works no matter what killed the neighbors.
Why it matters
Biofilms protect bacteria from antibiotics and the immune system, which makes infections and industrial contamination hard to clear. Learning how bacteria sense danger and decide to form biofilms could reveal new ways to steer bacterial behavior. Over the long term, this knowledge could inform biocontrol, new therapeutic strategies against biofilm-forming pathogens, and microbial ecology.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Christopher Waters
Michigan State University, MI·Microbiology & Immunology
Determine how DcdV, a two-domain deoxycytidine deaminase from Vibrio cholerae, works at the cellular and atomic levels, using genetics, biochemistry, microscopy, and structural biology.
Ming Hammond
University of Utah, UT·Chemistry
Develop a high-throughput assay that monitors in real time how small molecules cross into bacterial cells by passive permeation, active uptake or efflux pumping, and use it to test which structures and genes affect accumulation of dyes and clinical antibiotics.
Kathleen Treseder
University of California-Irvine, CA·Ecology & Evolution
Test whether soil fungi and bacteria adapt to extreme warming more effectively when they interact with the natural microbial community, through field evolution experiments spanning thousands of generations.
The school
Carnegie Mellon University: 28 labs on PI Pages, $505M a year on research, 346 research doctorates a year.
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