Pakula Biomedical Fellow Abigail Membrino’24

Abigail explains the importance of antibiotic research in light of an extreme antibiotic resistance crisis.

Within the past couple of decades there has been an extreme antibiotic resistance crisis within the medical field. Antibiotics are a crucial form of medication for bacterial diseases because they prevent and treat infections, extend life spans from infection death, and in locations where sanitary efforts are poor they decrease morbidity and mortality rates. However, antibiotic resistance has become an increasingly worse problem due to overuse and unregulated prescription use of the medicines. Therefore, it is paramount that more research is put into new antibiotic methods to keep the prevention and treatment of infections under control.

Recent literature is now focusing on protein-protein interactions within bacterial cells to target for new antibiotics, especially that of Hsp70 protein chaperones. It is widely researched that J-domain proteins (JDPs) aid with the ATPase activity of Hsp70s, which allows the protein to escalate the rate of basal activity and speed up the functionality. Modeling this behavior within Hsp70s and JDPs in coli is possible through purification and analysis of the proteins. Therefore, by understanding the interaction between DnaK (Hsp70) with CbpA (JDP) in E. coli, this can be targeted for drug interaction for future antibiotic research.

Abigail was advised by Taylor Arhar, Assistant Professor of Chemistry

Pakula Biomedical Fellowship Information

Abigail Membrino'24 Abigail Membrino'24

By: Abigail Membrino'24
June 21, 2023

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