Mark Marten
University of Maryland-Baltimore County, MD·Microbiology & Immunology
Filamentous fungi, molds that grow as networks of thread-like cells, matter enormously to people. They produce medicines and sustainable materials, and they also destroy crops and cause human disease.
- Fields
Microbiology & Immunology
Engineering
Biology
- Topics
filamentous fungi
Aspergillus nidulans
fungal cell wall
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jul 2028
What they work on
- Test whether Aspergillus nidulans responds to blocked β-glucan cell-wall synthesis in two phases: rapid actin redistribution to build protective septa (cross-walls), followed by a recovery phase of protein expression that restarts growth.
- Visualize actin localization and dynamics during cell-wall stress using advanced microscopy, and use genetic manipulation to identify the key regulatory proteins that coordinate survival and recovery.
- Identify a core set of stress regulators by comparing proteomic responses of A. nidulans across multiple cell-wall stressors, separating universal responses from stressor-specific ones.
- Build a hybrid model that combines mechanistic modeling and machine learning to infer the structure and interconnections of the fungal cell-wall stress signaling network.
More about the research
In every case, fungi rely on their protective cell wall. Yet it is not fully understood how fungi sense damage to that wall, survive it and then return to normal growth.
Why it matters
Learning how fungi repair their cell walls could eventually let engineers tune wall properties. This could raise productivity in fungal bioprocess manufacturing, such as pharmaceutical production, and improve renewable mycelium-based materials that could replace petroleum-based products. It could also reveal new targets for antifungal drugs that protect crops and human health.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Nancy Keller
University of Wisconsin-Madison, WI·Microbiology & Immunology
Determine the chemical products of isocyanide synthase (ICS) gene clusters that carry unusual enzymes or target proteins, using molecular and chemical analysis of fungi found by the lab's genome-mining pipeline.
Arturo Casadevall
Johns Hopkins University, MD·Microbiology & Immunology
Establish how Cryptococcus neoformans melanizes its cell wall, including the vesicle-based pathway (small membrane bubbles) that exports melanin outside the cell.
Tomas Gedeon
Montana State University, MT·Mathematics & Statistics
Enumerate and theoretically characterize the attractors of all monotone Boolean models compatible with a given gene regulatory network, using the lattice structure of these models.
The school
University of Maryland-Baltimore County: 7 labs on PI Pages, $151M a year on research, 90 research doctorates a year.
Reach out
A start for your email. Fill in the brackets.