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I am currently employed as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center. I work in the Chairman's research laboratory working primarily on two infectious bacteria: Haemophilus influenzae, which causes ear infections (otitis media, or OM) in children, and bacteria of the Burkholderia cepacia complex (Bcc) which normally are plant pathogens but which can cause complex infections in patients with Cystic Fibrosis. If you are interested in more information about the Bcc, you can visit the site of the International Burkholderia cepacia Working Group. Interestingly, our lab is hosting the annual meeting of the IBCWG here in Oklahoma City in April 2005. We expect to have more than 70 renowned researchers attending this meeting. In addition to our department's chairman, Terrance Stull, M.D., our lab is composed of several other very distinguished researchers: Paul Whitby, Ph.D., Daniel Morton, Ph.D. and Thomas Seale, Ph.D. More and more of my research employs a field called bioinformatics. In short, this is the use of computational models to help us predict the function of predicted proteins in these organisms. We then use models to help us predict aspects about these proteins, including the determination of whether or not these proteins might make good drug targets or vaccine candidates. A great deal of my current time is spent working on our collaboration with Arnold Smith's lab at the Seattle Biomedical Research Institute to annotate two new complete and one partially completed genome of nontypeable Haemophilus influenzae (NTHi). We hope that this will better help us to understand these bacteria so we can develop vaccines to prevent NTHi-mediated OM. In order to do my job, my laboratory recently purchased a new bioinformatics workstation for my research. It is a Dell workstation boasting dual Pentium 4 processors, 4 GB memory and 3 flat panel monitors to allow me to spread the work out over multiple screens. This amount of computing power is necessary to perform the complex searching and modeling required for bioinformatics. I've gone from being barely computer literate when I started by graduate career, to relying heavily on computers for my research. This includes having to be proficient in Linux, MacOS and some programming skills. My other major research interests include a study of the regulation of iron-related genes in H. influenzae, an understanding of the structure and function of a class of Haemophilus proteins involved in acquiring heme from the human hemoglobin and hemoglobin-haptoglobin complexes, and the discovery of new virulence factors in Burkholderia cenocepacia. Our research is funded by grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation and the Oklahoma Center for Advancement of Science and Technology (OCAST) Here are a few posters I've presented on my research in the past few years: American Society of Microbiology - General Meeting 2003 American Society of Microbiology - General Meeting 2004 And papers on our research from the last year: Characterization of three new competence-regulated operons in Haemophilus influenzae
Identification of a haem-utilization protein (Hup) in Haemophilus influenzae. The hem-binding lipoprotein (HbpA) of Haemophilus influenzae: role in heme utilization. Identification of an RTX determinant of Burkholderia cenocepacia J2315 by subtractive hybridization. Burkholderia cenocepacia utilizes ferritin as an iron source. Transcriptional profile of Haemophilus influenzae: Effects of iron and heme. |
