We replaced a (literally) century-old laborious assay to measure the attachment of viruses to bacteria. We developed a fast and efficient microscopy-approach to measure attachment of individual viruses to bacterial cells.
Phage χ can only infect E. coli with functional rotating flagella!! We studied what happens when bacteria are forced to evolve against this phage. We found: some bacteria swim slower, but some swim faster!
New England Biolabs (NEB) developed a Golden Gate method to engineer synthetic bacteriophages. I validated the expression of fluorescent proteins engineered into synthetic phage genomes.
Bacteria are great at evolving resistance to anything that we throw at them. This has caused antibiotic resistance crisis. We discuss smart approaches to use phages, viruses infecting bacteria, as therapeutics.
The flagellar motor in E. coli can sense mechanical forces. We discovered a mechanism involved in this sensing. See Tweetorial for a quick explanation.
H. pylori is a bacterium implicated in ulcers and cancers of the stomach. We studied their behavior in response to chemical gradients and the biophysical principles involved in their navigation.
Flagella are involved in the earliest stages of surface colonization by bacteria. We review the current understanding and challenges in Section 1 of an invited topical review.
The orthogonal cross‐sectional profiles (side-views) of fluorescent objects can be distorted when reconstructed from confocal image-slices (aka z-stacks). We designed a chamber to mount samples vertically: parallel to the optical axis, perpendicular to the imaging plane.
Intuition suggests that the stiff cell nucleus should be rupture-prone when forced to pass through obstacles. Instead, it behaves like an oil drop during migration, passing smoothly.