Many bacteria can persist in the body without eliciting disease symptoms. One bacterial pathogen capable of high levels of asymptomatic carriage in humans is Neisseria gonorrhoeae. N. gonorrhoeae recruits human proteins on the surface of infected cells to the site bacterial adhesion. I am working to understand the functional consequences of protein recruitment. For example, do recruited proteins protect N. gonorrhoeae from innate immune defenses like the complement cascade that can bind and kill this important human pathogen. A second area of my research is the development of animal models that mimic aspects of Neisseria-host interactions that have been refractory to in vivo experimentation including colonization, transmission and the spread of antimicrobial resistance.
