BBSP Faculty
The Hood Pishchany lab aims to build a community of researchers, educators, and learners partnering to cultivate understanding of the vaginal microbiome from the fundamental biology of its constituent members, the interactions between these members, and their overall impacts on host physiology. We aim to drive women’s health innovation through in-depth exploration of the vaginal microbiome, development of new tools for preclinical testing of microbiome-targeted therapies, and collaboration with academic, industry, community, and clinical partners.
Despite recent success in reducing malaria transmission, the estimated annual numbers of malaria infections (~225 million) and deaths (~781,000) remain high. Despite this immense burden, our understanding of the genetic diversity of malaria and the factors that promote this diversity is limited. This diversity among plasmodial parasites has a critical impact on many factors involved in the control of infections, including: 1) development of drug resistance, 2) development of naturally acquired immunity, and 3) vaccine design. My laboratory’s primary interests are: 1) describing the genetic diversity of P. falciparum using molecular biological and next generation sequencing tools, and 2) using these data to understand the evolutionary and ecological factors that drive this diversity, promote the emergence of drug resistance and affect our ability to effectively develop immunity.
Traditionally, basic science has sought to enter the translational pipeline through what can be referred to as “Bottom-Up” science, that is, studies that start with a hypothesis in the lab and aim to develop clinical relevance of the findings. In some cases, notably in conventional antibiotic development, this has worked well – but it assumes one-size fits all solutions that are only as good as our assumptions about the biology of many infectious diseases such as tuberculosis. By contrast, my research focuses on a “Top-Down” approach, leveraging the power of bacterial population genomics to identify bacterial processes important for Mtb success in people and to then employ cutting-edge experimental techniques to mechanistically dissect these processes with the goal of leveraging them using new translational tools.
In my work to date, I have applied this “Top-Down” strategy to define bacterial determinants of treatment outcomes and transmission success, as evident in first-author/corresponding author publications in prestigious journals such as Science, Nature Ecology Evolution, Cell Host Microbe, Science Advances, Genome Biology, PNAS, etc. My work combines expertise in evolutionary biology and bacterial genomics, cutting-edge bacterial genetics and high-throughput experimental phenotyping.
In my own lab, I will use these tools to (1) define the biological mechanisms that enable Mtb to survive antibiotic treatment; (2) identify bacterial determinants of TB transmission success; and (3) elucidate the evolutionary mechanisms underlying the emergence of new bacterial pathogens.
We are a biological oceanography lab that performs inquiry-based science by combining physiological and molecular approaches in laboratory isolates and natural communities to investigate how marine microorganisms are affected by their environment and in turn, influence ocean biogeochemistry and ecosystem dynamics. Particular interests include studying trace metals, such as iron, that are essential for the nutrition of phytoplankton and predicting the effects of future climate changes on phytoplankton distribution and abundance. We implement the use of environmental genomic approaches (e.g. RNA-seq) to ascertain the ways in which marine microbes have adapted and acclimate to varying environmental conditions.
My work focuses on the role of plant pathogens in (A) controlling or facilitating biological invasions by plants, (B) structuring plant communities, and (C) modulating the effects of global change on terrestrial ecosystems. My group works on viruses, bacteria, and fungi that infect wild plants, chiefly grasses and other herbaceous species. Ultimately, I am interested in the implications of these processes for the sustainable provisioning of ecosystem services and for the conservation of biological diversity.
My lab concentrates on studying the molecular genetic basis of the evolutionary processes of adaptation and speciation. The questions we ask are what are the sequence changes that lead to variation between species and diversity within species, and what can these changes tell us about the processes that lead to their evolution. We use a number of different techniques to answer these questions, including molecular biology, sequence analyses (i.e. population genetics and molecular evolution techniques), physiological studies, and examinations of whole-organism fitness. Currently work in the lab has focused on a intertidal copepod species that is an excellent model for the initial stages of speciation (and also provides opportunities to study how populations of this species adapt to their physical environment).