Microbiology & Molecular Genetics

Robert L. Burnap received his bachelor's degree at the University of Michigan. He went on to the University of California at Los Angeles for a Masters in biology and then to University of California at Santa Barbara, where he developed a Ph.D. thesis on the evolution of the oxygenic photosynthetic mechanism, specifically how the chloroplast evolved from oxygenic bacteria, cyanobacteria. His postdoctoral training was in the genetic manipulation cyanobacteria and biophysical analysis of photosynthetic proteins at Purdue University. As a faculty member in the Department of Microbiology & Molecular Genetics at OSU, he continues research and teaching in fundamental aspects of living systems.He leads two on-going research projects: The first, supported by the NSF, investigates the core process of photosynthesis where light energy is harnessed to split water, also known as water oxidation– a process that underpins natural solar energy production enabling plant growth and sustaining high levels of oxygen in the Earth's atmosphere. The second, funded by the DOE, the CO₂ concentrating mechanism in cyanobacteria. Both projects combine molecular genetics, biochemistry, and biophysics to understand these processes at the molecular level. Besides the fundamental knowledge derived, research into these topics has special relevance to the development of sustainable, Earth-friendly technologies. Deeply committed to education, Burnap brings together a mix of undergraduate, graduate, and postdoctoral researchers in his group. He teaches several courses including Cell & Molecular Biology, Bioenergetics, and Principals of Bioinformatics. The Bioinformatics class started as a graduate course, but is now populated with an equal number of undergraduate students interested in this fast-moving field that is closely connected to genomics and other vanguard areas of biology. Burnap has served as a rotating Program Director in the Division of Cellular and Molecular Biochemistry at the National Science Foundation where he received recognitions for leadership in 'Advancing the New Biology' and for the co-development of the US-United Kingdom Photosynthesis Ideas Lab, which employed an innovative think-tank approach to the promotion of innovation and multi-disciplinary research. More recently, he is a recipient of an Einstein Fellowship in Germany enabling collaborative research with scientists in Berlin.

Timely Quote:" Whenever objectivity, truth, and justice are at stake, a scientist has the duty to form an opinion, and defend it"  Jacques Monod, Nobel Prize winner for the discovery of the genetic regulation (genetic induction) in: "Letter to the Editor." Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 9(8), pp. 319–320 1953

Research Interests:

Mechanism of photosynthetic water oxidation
CO₂ uptake mechanisms of powered-carbonic anhydrases in cyanobacteria
Integrative modeling of unicellular growth

Matt Cabeen is a Professor in the Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics at Oklahoma State University. He joined the OSU faculty in 2017. His laboratory is focused on bacterial molecular genetics and molecular signaling pathways, using Bacillus subtilis and Pseudomonas aeruginosa as model organisms. He teaches courses in Introductory Microbiology and Antibiotics and Antibiotic Resistance.

Research Interests:

Environmental stress sensing, signaling, and processing in Bacillus subtilis.
Biofilm formation and biofilm signaling by Pseudomonas aeruginosa.
Regulation of pyocin production by Pseudomonas aeruginosa.

     Conway serves as Principal Investigator and Director of the Oklahoma Center for Microbiome Research (OCMR), an NIH-funded Center of Biomedical Research Excellence (COBRE). Microbiome science is one of OSU's strategic research priorities. The OCMR-COBRE provides mentoring and financial support to five research project leaders and the newly created Microbiomics and Culturomics Core Facility (MCCF). The MCCF provides anerobic culturomics services to OCMR members and the scientific community accross Oklahoma.

     Research in the Conway laboratory centers on the physiological state of colonized Escherichia coli in the mammalian large intestine. We use transcriptomics and mass spectrometry together with more traditional approaches to ask how E. coli colonizes the large intestine. The data illuminate cellular processes -- nutrition and niche availability -- that are important for colonization and pathogenesis. The research involves testing of hypotheses in the mouse model, as opposed to working with laboratory cultures. Importantly, we found that different E. coli biotypes compete for different sugars in the intestine, suggesting a mechanism for the succession of E. coli strains in healthy individuals and infection by E. coli pathogens that must overcome the colonization resistance barrier imparted by the resident E. coli. Subsequently, we established that different E. coli biotypes occupy distinct niches in the intestine that allow strains to co-colonize. In addition, we learned that E. coli must respire oxygen to be competitive in the intestine. This finding suggests that E. coli scavenges oxygen to create anaerobic conditions that favor growth of the anaerobes that dominate the intestinal microbiota. More recently we explored and characterized this symbiotic relationship between E. coli and the anaerobes that degrade complex polysaccharides, which in turn release simple sugars to cross-feed E. coli. We call this symbiosis of intestinal microorganisms "the restaurant hypothesis". Building on our effort to characterize the functional roles of individual microbes in the human microbiome we recently discovered the primary source of nitrogen used by E. coli to colonize is L-serine. In the bioinformatics laboratory, our focus is on development of intuitive displays for the functional genomics data warehouse to provide a computational environment for knowledge and discovery. Our single-nucleotide resolution operon map of E. coli serves as a community resource. Conway is a fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology.

Research Interests:

Microbiome, Metabolism, Physiology, Microbiology, Bacteriology, E. coli, enterohemorrhagic E. coli, Intestinal colonization, Microbial ecology, Genetic control circuits, Growth rate control, Stringent response, Transcriptomics, Acid tolerance, Entner-Doudoroff pathway, Metabolic Engineering, Zymomonas mobilis, Bioinformatics

Wouter Hoff is a Professor in the Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics at Oklahoma State University. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and is the Founding Associate Director of the OSU A&S Center for Advanced Infrared Biology.

We explore fundamental questions in the molecular life sciences using interdisciplinary approaches, often involving collaborators from different areas. In overview (more details below), we have recently been working in the following areas:

·       Microbiology and molecular evolution:

o   Bacterial photobiology: why do so many bacteria use photoreceptors?

o   Antibiotics resistance: can evolutionary strategies be used to address this challenge?

o   tRNA sets: how and why do tRNA sets stay constant or evolve across the tree of life?

o   The tree of life: what are the large-scale trends in the molecular evolution of life?

o   Extreme halophiles: how can organisms adapt their proteome to thrive high salt conditions?

·       Protein biophysics, evolution, and spectroscopy:

o   Structure-function relationships: how to predict the properties of entire protein families?

o   Fundamental and universal processes in proteins: understanding protein dynamics, intramolecular proton transfer, and receptor activation using photoreceptor model systems.

o   Active site strain and protein-ligand interactions using photoreceptor model systems.

·       Course-embedded authentic research:

o   Course-embedded research on bacterial diversity and genomics.

o   Peer reviewed science writing by undergraduate students

Visit my lab's website here

Research Interests:

Bacteriophages
Microbial Evolution
Horizontal Gene Transfer

Our lab is interested in understanding the molecular mechanisms of calcium (Ca²⁺ ) signaling in bacteria and its role in regulating virulence and resistance in human pathogens. Ca²⁺ regulates a number of essential processes in eukaryotes, however, very little is know about the regulatory and signaling roles of Ca²⁺ in bacteria. We aim to identify and characterize Ca²⁺ signal transduction cascades regulating virulence and adaptations to host in Pseudomonas aeruginosa, a human pathogen causing severe acute and chronic infections.

I am a biologist trained in biochemical genetics, specializing in microorganisms. My training focused on simplifying biological systems to gene–protein interactions to understand how molecular genetic functions produce phenotypes. My research examines how simple eukaryotes transform molecules in response to environmental cues. A clear example is fungi that utilize plant cell walls as food. These walls are composed of complex, resistant polymers derived from simple sugars. Despite being abundant carbon sources, fungi must first recognize these polymers, activate specific genetic pathways, and produce enzymes to break them down into absorbable sugars such as glucose. I am curious about how these processes are controlled and coordinated at the genetic and molecular levels. Specifically, I aim to understand how posttranscriptional regulation and the organization of the fungal endomembrane system influence enzyme trafficking, secretion, and extracellular vesicle formation. Collectively, these mechanisms form adaptive systems that allow fungi to modify their environment and obtain nutrients effectively.