Ryan Peterson
Texas State University, TX·Microbiology & Immunology
Copper is an essential nutrient for fungi, but during infection the host's immune system tries to lock metals away. A fungal pathogen must out-compete these defenses to grow.
- Fields
Microbiology & Immunology
Biochemistry
Chemistry
- Topics
fungal pathogens
Pseudogymnoascus destructans
white-nose syndrome
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Mar 2031
What they work on
- Identify and characterize the copper-binding metallophore that Pseudogymnoascus destructans secretes under copper limitation, testing the hypothesis that it is an opine-based metallophore, a class previously known only in bacteria.
- Determine how enzymes encoded by the Copper Responsive Cluster (CRC) build this metallophore, using biochemical and biophysical studies of recombinantly expressed enzymes.
- Delete individual CRC genes in Pd to test their functions and trafficking, and knock out two ACE1/MAC1-like copper-sensing transcription factors to define how they regulate CRC genes and the copper stress response.
- Investigate how Pd's three BIM1-like proteins scavenge trace copper, mapping where they sit outside the cell and how they rearrange during shape changes and environmental stress.
More about the research
Many disease-causing fungi live in soil or the environment and must adapt to new settings, including an animal host. The lab is developing Pseudogymnoascus destructans (Pd) as a model for how such fungi scavenge copper. Pd is a soil-associated fungus that infects bats. The work focuses on three extracellular copper-capturing strategies: secreted small molecules called metallophores, which grab metals; copper-binding proteins related to lytic polysaccharide monooxygenases (LPMOs); and proteins like BIM1 from Cryptococcus neoformans (CnBIM1). The lab uses biochemical, biophysical and cell biology approaches.
Why it matters
Millions of people are exposed every year to soil and environmental fungi that can cause disease. Understanding how these fungi capture copper despite the body's metal-withholding defenses could lay groundwork for future antifungal treatment and prevention strategies. Related molecules and proteins have direct clinical relevance.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Arturo Casadevall
Johns Hopkins University, MD·Microbiology & Immunology
Establish how Cryptococcus neoformans melanizes its cell wall, including the vesicle-based pathway (small membrane bubbles) that exports melanin outside the cell.
Michael Johnson
University of Arizona, AZ·Microbiology & Immunology
Measure how Streptococcus pneumoniae changes its gene activity and metabolite levels across a range of copper and zinc concentrations, using transcriptomics and metabolomics in a minimal, host-like growth medium.
Katharine Watts
California Polytechnic State University-San Luis Obispo, CA·Biochemistry
Identify the role of individual genes in TLN-05220 biosynthesis by making gene knockouts in the wild-type bacterium that naturally produces this Echinosporamicin-type antibiotic.
The school
Texas State University: 8 labs on PI Pages, $165M a year on research, 71 research doctorates a year.
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