Gerald Koudelka, University of Buffalo

Infectious Diseases: Are Humans Collateral Damage in an Ongoing Microbial War? Microbial adaptations that shape predation resistance and human virulence.

The strategies needed for survival of bacteria in nature and successful pathogenicity during human infection are similar. Thus, the evolutionary arms race between eukaryotic bacterivorous predators and their bacterial prey seemingly drives bacterial pathogenicity. To test this idea, we are exploring the molecular mechanisms that govern bacterial to resistance protist predation and human pathogenicity.