Larry Dishaw
University of South Florida, FL·Microbiology & Immunology
The gut of nearly every animal is packed with bacteria that shape digestion, immunity, and health. Those bacteria are themselves infected by viruses called bacteriophages, and one kind, temperate phages, inserts its DNA into the bacterial genome and sits there as a prophage, usually described as dormant.
- Fields
Microbiology & Immunology
Biology
Ecology & Evolution
- Topics
prophages
bacteriophages
temperate phage
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Jul 2027
What they work on
- Characterize the distribution of prophages and their insertion locations in the genomes of cultivated heterotrophic bacteria isolated from the gut microbiomes of the tunicate Ciona robusta and the zebrafish Danio rerio.
- Determine how individual prophages change bacterial host properties, including swimming motility, biofilm formation, and growth and physiology, using targeted prophage deletion mutagenesis in cultivated gut isolates.
- Test whether prophages shape bacterial colonization of the animal gut and the stability of the resulting microbiome, combining in vivo colonization experiments in Ciona and zebrafish with in silico ecological modeling.
- Test the hypothesis that lysogenic conversion, the change in bacterial physiology caused by an integrated phage, drives both major and minor functional shifts across model animal microbiomes.
More about the research
Dormant is misleading: the inserted DNA can switch neighboring bacterial genes on or off, carry genes of its own, and change how the bacterium swims, sticks, or resists antibiotics. While the roles of bacteria in animal microbiomes are increasingly well mapped, what prophages do to the structure and function of those communities has been largely overlooked. This collaborative project tests the hypothesis that prophages shape their bacterial hosts' biology and thereby drive structural and functional change in animal microbiomes.
Why it matters
Gut bacterial communities influence host health, and prophages can make their bacterial hosts behave differently and more resistant to antibiotics. Learning how these integrated viruses alter bacterial behavior and community stability could identify general rules for what keeps a gut microbiome balanced, information relevant to understanding antibiotic resistance and to efforts that aim to manage or restore microbial communities.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Paul Kirchberger
Oklahoma State University, OK·Microbiology & Immunology
Compare the mechanisms of superinfection exclusion, by which a resident prophage blocks other viruses, across independently evolved microvirus prophages, a putative defense system and lytic microviruses that may have supplied its evolutionary precursors.
Muhammad Zafar
Emory University, GA·Microbiology & Immunology
Determine the distinct roles of the two genetically separate ethanolamine utilization (eut) gene clusters of Klebsiella pneumoniae in using ethanolamine, a membrane and diet byproduct, as a nutrient in the mouse gut.
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 South Florida: 20 labs on PI Pages, $522M a year on research, 305 research doctorates a year.
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