Antimicrobial Stress Response in Bacteria

One of the major public health concerns today is the dramatic rise of antimicrobial resistance. To counter this challenge, we must first understand the biochemical and regulatory pathways that underlie the resistance. My research is focused on signaling systems involved in antimicrobial peptide response. I discovered that treating E. coli with sublethal concentrations of antimicrobial peptides causes cells to filament, driven by a two-component system - PhoQ/PhoP. This block in cell division is the result of high stimulus through this two-component system and is mediated by a tRNA modification enzyme (QueE). The control of septation by PhoQ/PhoP may protect cells from antimicrobial peptide-induced stress