Research

My research interests are focused on investigating the links between antibiotic resistance, biofilm formation and lipid metabolism in mycobacteria which cause infectious diseases in humans.

 

Mycobacterium abscessus is a biofilm-forming, antibiotic-tolerant, non-tuberculous mycobacterium and causes lung and soft tissue infections. Nontuberculous mycobacteria like M. abscessus are emerging as pathogens and affect immunocompromised persons worldwide. We perform our studies using M. abscessus and Mycobacterium smegmatis, which is a nontuberculous mycobacterium and also a model organism for Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the human lung pathogen that kills more than a million humans annually worldwide.

 

The antibiotic-tolerant property of M. abscessus has been attributed to the numerous efflux pumps that it possesses and its ability to form biofilms. Efflux pumps are associated with the export of extracellular polymeric substances and their inactivation by efflux pump inhibitors blocked bacterial biofilm formation. Efflux pumps have been linked to transport of lipids which are a major constituent of the extracellular matrix of M. abscessus biofilms. Lipids constitute the most abundant component of the extracellular matrix of M. abscessus biofilms. The functions of mycobacterial lipids in biofilm formation and the roles of efflux pumps need to be investigated further.

 

In order to address these challenges, my laboratory investigates the roles of efflux pumps in biofilm formation, antibiotic tolerance and lipid metabolism associated with biofilm formation by using efflux pump inhibitors. We investigate the metabolic utilization of exogenous long-chain fatty acids in the biosynthesis of polar cell surface and cellular lipids of log-phase and biofilm M. abscessus cells and the effect of efflux pump inhibitors on such metabolic processes. Our research addresses the need to discover effective efflux pump inhibitors that target M. abscessus in biofilms.