Bacteriophages – viruses of bacterial hosts – are powerful tools for understanding and controlling bacterial pathogens of Man. Phages are not only abundant, diverse, and replete with genetic novelty, but can provide effective solutions for the development of systems to manipulate genetically naïve bacteria. They are relatively simple to isolate and characterize and thus are well-suited to the development of tools for medical microbiology in high-burden resource-limited environments. Although bacteriophage-centric genetic strategies are applicable to virtually all bacterial pathogens, they also present innovative opportunities to modify food-derived commensal bacteria of Man, for utilities such as vaccine delivery. My research program focuses on phage development of tools for the pathogen Mycobacterium tuberculosis, and the food-derived commensal Lactobacillus sp. My lab focuses in the study of bacteriophages to develop new tools for bacteria manipulation. We work in two primary lines of research, that even are not directly related, share similar methodologies but for different final purposes:
1- Use of reporter mycobacteriophages for detection and susceptibility testing of Mycobacterium tuberculosis.
2- Use of bacteriophages for genetic manipulation of lactic acid bacteria (LAB), including construction of food grade mutants and antigen expression for vaccine development.
