Author: Deborah Hogan

Come join the Hogan Lab to study microbial evolution in chronic lung infections! 

Postdoctoral positions in the Hogan Lab at Dartmouth in Hanover, NH are available with flexible start times. There are opportunities to work on fungi (non-albicans yeast including Candida lusitaniae and Candida auris) or on the bacterium Pseudomonas aeruginosa. Project themes include using the analysis of naturally occurring evolution during in chronic infections to gain insight into in vivo fitness and microbe-microbe interactions. We focus on research that is guided by the analysis of populations from clinical samples and we use genomics, transcriptomics, genetics, and metabolic analyses to understand how the host and co-infecting microbes impact pathogen behavior and drug resistance. 

We work in a vibrant, highly collaborative and interactive research environment within the Microbiology and Molecular Pathogenesis Program (M2P2) and Dartmouth Cystic Fibrosis Center (DartCF). Postdocs will have opportunities to present their work in a variety of venues including weekly seminar series, lab meetings, annual retreats and national and international scientific meetings. Members of the Hogan Lab collaborate with experts in diverse fields. Individualized professional development opportunities towards next career steps will be a core part of post-doctoral training. 

The candidate must have a PhD, be experienced with molecular biological methods, and be fascinated by microbiology. Our research projects are supported by the National Institute of Health and the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. The Hogan Lab is deeply committed to promoting diversity, equity and inclusion in science. 

For details, please visit our website . Interested candidates should forward their curriculum vitae to Deborah Hogan (dhogan@dartmouth.edu).  

Danielle was just awarded a CFF post-doctoral fellowship to continue her exciting work on how zinc binding proteins, like calprotectin, modulate P. aeruginosa physiology and virulence!!

Congratulations to Georgia Doing for being selected as a JTech Scholarship Awardee in association with the Cold Spring Harbor Biological Data Science Meeting! She will present her work on eADAGE that she has done in collaboration with the Greene Lab (UPenn). Image by Dallas Mould.

 

Check out a recent paper by Michelle Clay and Jack Hammond about an oxygen-binding hemerythrin that contributes to microoxic fitness. Our data suggest that naturally occurring P. aeruginosa lasR mutants high levels of Mhr and other Anr regulated gene products contributes to increased microoxic fitness in comparison to otherwise isogenic LasR+ strains.

 

Kimberley Lewis contributed to an exciting comparison of how different strains in collaboration with Calvin Lee and Gerard Wong at UCLA. The paper is entitled Social cooperativity of bacteria during reversible surface attachment in young biofilms: a quantitative comparison of Pseudomonas aeruginosa PA14 and PAO1.

 

Adel Malek, a former student, just accepted a position as Clinical Assistant Professor with the Faculty of Medicine at  Memorial University and Clinical and Public Health Microbiologist, Province of Newfoundland where he will do both clinical service and genomics research.

Kim successfully defended her PhD the day after her paper came out in the Biofilm issue of the Journal of Bacteriology!

 

Congratulations to Amy Biermann for being accepted into the Molecular Mycology Summer Course in Woods Hole. Furthermore, she received the Ronald K. Taylor Memorial Scholarship to support her tuition in the course!

Colleen’s paper is now out in JB. In this work, she described how the responses of P. aeruginosa to ethanol, a common metabolite produced by many microbes, is strongly influenced by growth stage and quorum sensing. This information provides insight into the complexities of microbe-microbe interactions. 

 

A study by Colleen Harty, in collaboration with Georgia Doing, Dallas Mould, and Michelle Clay, presents a model for a Pseudomonas aeruginosa response to ethanol, a common metabolite produced by other microbes, that integrates other cues about nutrient availability and cell density.  You can see the paper here.

We are excited to publish new work describing the extreme heterogeneity in a single gene in a Candida lusitaniae population from a single chronic lung infection.  For more information, see PNAS November 20, 2018 115 (47) 12040-12045. This work, led by Elora Demers, is part of a collaboration with Jason Stajich (UC Riverside).