Shelbi Russell
University of California-Santa Cruz, CA·Microbiology & Immunology
Many animals carry bacteria inside their cells and pass them on to their offspring. Wolbachia is one such bacterium.
- Fields
Microbiology & Immunology
Genetics
Ecology & Evolution
- Topics
Wolbachia
Drosophila melanogaster
fruit fly
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Dec 2029
What they work on
- Track genome evolution in Drosophila cell lines carrying mixed infections of several Wolbachia strains, to capture rare horizontal transmission events between hosts.
- Identify the genomic basis of Wolbachia 'domestication' after a host switch, using historical Drosophila stocks collected right after a strain entered and spread through a new host.
- Profile host and Wolbachia gene expression to find host developmental programs and molecular mechanisms that the symbiont induces.
- Test candidate Wolbachia genes in infected cells and flies for effects on where the bacteria sit within and among cells, on stable infection and on fertility reinforcement.
More about the research
It lives inside insects and can alter host biology in striking ways. It can skew reproduction toward infected females, and it can suppress viruses so that mosquitoes spread them to people less often. These traits are already used to control insect populations. Yet scientists know little about how Wolbachia causes these effects or how it passes from one host generation to the next.
Why it matters
Wolbachia-infected mosquitoes are released into the wild to reduce disease transmission. Knowing how divergent strains evolve in new hosts could make these biological control programs safer and better informed. The project's discoveries about how host and symbiont molecules interact could also reveal new biological pathways for biomedical use. Its methods for testing genes in unculturable bacteria could benefit microbiologists more broadly.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Stanislava Chtarbanova
University of Alabama, AL·Microbiology & Immunology
Determine whether older fruit flies survive Flock House Virus infection through infection tolerance, by changing their metabolism to limit damage, using genetic, molecular and metabolic methods.
John E Pool
University of Wisconsin-Madison, WI·Ecology & Evolution
Develop a genomic authentication pipeline that detects contamination in Drosophila lab stocks and characterizes their genomes, applying it to 200 widely studied stocks.
Liana Burghardt
Pennsylvania State University, PA·Ecology & Evolution·Early-career
Identify which legume host traits support which rhizobial bacteria by analyzing plant characteristics and field samples from legumes, using traditional and AI-enabled image and statistical analysis.
The school
University of California-Santa Cruz: 15 labs on PI Pages, $218M a year on research, 183 research doctorates a year.
Reach out
A start for your email. Fill in the brackets.