Computational and Systems Biology Summer Institute
Iowa State University

We currently focus on studying bacterial antibiotic resistance mediated by active multi-drug efflux transporters.  Our long-term goal is to elucidate the structures and fundamental mechanisms that give rise to multiple drug recognition and extrusion in these multi-drug transporters.  In addition, our laboratory addresses fundamental questions regarding the nature of multi-drug recognition and gene regulation in transcriptional regulators.  These regulators control the expression of multi-drug efflux transporters in bacteria by sensing the presence of a variety of structurally unrelated toxic compounds in the environment.  Our experimental approach mainly utilizes x-ray crystallography to elucidate toxic chemical binding and export by these membrane efflux transporters.