Reed Stubbendieck
Oklahoma State University, OK·Microbiology & Immunology
Antibiotics save lives, but misusing them breeds drug-resistant germs. It also damages the helpful microbes living in our bodies, which can open the door to infections such as Staphylococcus aureus.
- Fields
Microbiology & Immunology
Chemistry
Biochemistry
- Topics
microbiome
aerodigestive tract
Staphylococcus aureus
- Grants
- 2 known grants, through Jan 2029
What they work on
- Culture Dolosigranulum pigrum from nasal swabs and test its inhibition of multiple Staphylococcus aureus strains with co-culture plate assays under conditions mimicking the human nose.
- Purify anti-S. aureus RiPPs (modified peptides made on the ribosome) from D. pigrum and determine their structures with mass spectrometry and NMR spectroscopy.
- Build a genetic system for D. pigrum by testing electroporation, polyethylene glycol transformation and conjugation, then delete RiPP gene clusters by allelic exchange to confirm their role against S. aureus.
- Test whether commensal nose and mouth bacteria rich in biosynthetic gene clusters change their secondary metabolite production when exposed to pathogens, using co-culture bioassays and comparative metabolomics.
- Sequence genomes of pathogen-inhibiting bacteria, disrupt candidate gene clusters found by comparative genomics, and purify and solve the structures of resulting antibiotics by mass spectrometry and NMR.
More about the research
Microbes in the nose and mouth compete constantly, and some make their own chemical weapons against invaders. Because these molecules evolved inside the human body, they may target pathogens narrowly without harming the host or its helpful microbes. Both projects mine these natural interactions for new, "microbiome-safe" antibiotics. They combine bacterial culture, genetics, genomics and chemical structure analysis.
Why it matters
Drug-resistant S. aureus and other pathogens need new treatments that do not wreck the protective microbiome the way broad antibiotics do. Molecules made by nose and mouth bacteria to fight pathogens could become leads for narrow-spectrum antibiotics. These would help patients with resistant infections while sparing helpful microbes. Screening based on ecology could also become a new route for drug discovery.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Mohammad R Seyedsayamdost
Princeton University, NJ·Chemistry
Use high-throughput elicitor screening (HiTES) and genome-guided searches to uncover cryptic natural products in human microbiome bacteria, including radical SAM-modified peptides and selenium-containing metabolites.
Javier Tabima Restrepo
Clark University, MA·Ecology & Evolution
Reconstruct the evolutionary relationships among Basidiobolus species, using genome sequences from fungal samples collected around the world.
Alexander Cole
University of Central Florida, FL·Microbiology & Immunology
Purify and identify the anti-Staphylococcus aureus proteins and polypeptides secreted by nasal Klebsiella isolates, starting from conditioned culture medium that can be prepared at large scale.
The school
Oklahoma State University: 15 labs on PI Pages, $254M a year on research, 238 research doctorates a year.
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