What do we do

Bacteria may be very small, 100 to 1000 times smaller than one of our cells, but they have evolved to grow in many different environments, from the frozen lakes of Siberia, to the heat vents of the Atacama desert, to the depths of the ocean and even to the warm and cozy environment of our belly! This is because they have evolved mechanisms that allow them to rapidly adapt to external conditions. The adaptability of both beneficial and pathogenic bacteria is due to the fact that bacteria can alter the kinds of proteins they produce in response to external stimuli. For example, the bacterial that live in our gut spend half of their lives in the outside world, in the cold and nutrient poor environment, and half of their lives in the rich, warm, diverse bacterial community that is our intestine. To do this, they need to produce different proteins to help them perform basic functions in new conditions. The capacity of bacteria to produce different proteins based on environmental needs is true for all kinds of cells, and is just a small glimpse of the fascinating impacts of evolution on cellular life.Here at the lab, we try to better understand how bacteria adapt to different growth conditions by studying the molecular interactions that can control the kinds of proteins produced by the cell. These interactions primarily take place between differing proteins or between proteins and DNA. You can find out more about this in the Gene Expression page.

As researchers we often get the question of whether we have found what we are looking for. Well, sometimes we do, sometimes we even find something different, which makes it even more interesting. To read more about research we have been doing and our new findings regarding gene regulation, take a look at our "Recent Results".