Meet the Microbiologist

Stanley Falkow is a professor of Microbiology & Immunology at the Stanford School of Medicine. His research interests lie in bacterial pathogenesis – how bacteria cause infection and disease – and over the course of his career he has contributed fundamental discoveries to the field. Falkow received the Lasker prize this year for special achievement in medical science, and the Lasker Foundation calls him “one of the great microbe hunters of all time”. Molecular techniques (methods of analysis that rely on bacterial DNA) are now widely used for infectious disease diagnosis, thanks in large part to Falkow, who was among the first to apply an understanding of genes and virulence determinants to analyzing patient samples. He has published extensively in areas ranging from antibiotic resistance to food borne illness to microarrays. It is really difficult to compose interview questions for a scientist whose career has been as far-reaching and profoundly significant as Stan Falkow’s. Luckily for me, Dr. Falkow is a gracious conversationalist. In this interview, I talked with Dr. Falkow about his prescient concerns about the dangers of using antibiotics as growth promoters in livestock, why Salmonella is so good at making you sick, and why students who are interested in science should follow their passion.

Rachel Whitaker is an assistant professor of microbiology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where she has developed a research program focused on the evolutionary ecology of microorganisms. Much of Dr. Whitaker’s work centers around a hyperthermophile found in geothermal springs: the archaeon Sulfolobus islandicus. Evolution is not just history – it’s still in action today, molding humans, plants, animals and, of course, microbes, in ways we still don’t completely understand. One of Whitaker’s focus areas is archaea, a group of single-celled microbes that are found in some of the harshest environments on earth. By looking at how one variety of archaea, Sulfolobus, varies from place to place, Whitaker hopes to find whether Sulfolobus is adapting new characteristics to suit its habitats, and whether this kind of adaptation can help us explain why there are so many different kinds of microbes in the world. In this interview, I asked Dr. Whitaker about the hot springs where she studies Sulfolobus, whether it’s hard to communicate with ecologists who work with bigger organisms, and about new discoveries she’s made related to an immune system in archaea.

Dr. Anthony Fauci is the director of NIAID – the National Institutes for Allergy and Infectious Disease – where he is also Chief of the Laboratory of Immunoregulation. Dr. Fauci’s research interests lie primarily in the molecular mechanisms of HIV and AIDS, and he has published extensively on the interactions of HIV with the immune system. He’ll be speaking at the opening session of ICAAC – the Interscience Conference on Antimicrobial Agents and Chemotherapy – on October 25 in Washington DC, where he’ll describe some of the remaining challenges in the fight against HIV, tuberculosis, and antibiotic resistant microbes. Dr. Fauci is not only a researcher, he is also an important player in science policy in the U.S. He was a primary architect of PEPFAR, the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, a program that received reauthorization and has a budget of $48 billion for HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria around the world. In honor of his efforts to improve our understanding and treatment of HIV and AIDS, Dr. Fauci was recently awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civil award. In this interview, I talked with Dr. Fauci about progress in managing infectious disease on a global scale, why it’s the “devil you don’t know” that is still the scariest infectious disease of all, and about the roles of abstinence education and condom awareness in PEPFAR.

Bruce Rittmann, the Director of the Center for Environmental Biotechnology at the Biodesign Institute of Arizona State, focuses his efforts on reclaiming contaminated water and producing renewable energy using microbes. He was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2004 and credited with pioneering development of biofilm fundamentals and contributing to their widespread use in the bioremediation of contaminated ecosystems. His research combines many disciplines of science, including engineering, microbiology, biochemistry, geochemistry and microbial ecology. Formerly with Northwestern University, Rittmann is also a leader in the development of the Membrane Biofilm Reactor, an approach that uses bacteria to destroy pollutants in water. The Membrane Biofilm Reactor is especially effective for removing perchlorate from drinking water, and it is being launched commercially. In this podcast, I talk with Dr. Rittmann about the biofilm reactor process, the electricity hiding in our wastewater, and how we may some day grow fuel on the roofs of buildings.

Brett Finlay is a professor in the Michael Smith Laboratories, and the Departments of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, and Microbiology and Immunology at the University of British Columbia. His research program focuses on E. coli, how it interacts with the cells of the human gut, and mouse models of E. coli-like infections.  Dr. Finlay will speak at the conference on Beneficial Microbes in San Diego this October, where he’ll describe the results of some of his latest research, which examines how E. coli infections effect the microbes that live in our guts. Sadly, outbreaks of Escherichia coli infections in this country are common – just this summer a huge E. coli outbreak in Oklahoma sickened nearly 300 people and sent 67 of them to the hospital.  Clearly, in an outbreak, not everyone is effected equally.  When lots of people are exposed to E. coli, why do some of those people walk away unharmed while others wind up in the I.C.U.?  Dr. Finlay would say part of the answer, at least, probably lies in which microbes live in our intestine. In this podcast, I talked with Dr. Finlay about why we have so many different kinds of microbes in our guts, what happens to them when E. coli strikes, and why we have a long way to go before probiotics offer help – and not just hope.

David Relman, Professor of Medicine and of Microbiology & Immunology at Stanford University, talks about our personal microbial ecosystems, the complex interactions between microbes and our bodies, the effects of oral antibiotics on our gut, and the challenges and progress in understanding the human microbiome.

Ute Hentschel is a professor of chemical ecology at the University of Würzburg in Germany. Her research focuses on characterizing the microbial communities associated with marine sponges, the diversity of these symbionts and their activities. On this episode, I talk with Ute Hentschel about her research on the microbes that live on and in sea sponges – those squishy, colorful residents of coral reefs. Dr. Hentschel describes some of the utterly unique microbes that are only found in sponges, what those microbes get from living in a sponge hotel, and why it’s nice to have a study site in the Bahamas.

Seth Darst is a professor of Molecular Biophysics at the Rockefeller University in New York city, where his research centers on RNA polymerase, the enzyme at the heart of a cell’s ability to make protein from a set of DNA instructions. In this interview, I talk with Dr. Darst about how he got his start in research, whether computers will eventually be able to predict complex protein structures, and why eager young scientists shouldn’t miss their chance at postdoctoral training.

Ralph Tanner, a professor of microbiology at the University of Oklahoma, focuses his research on anaerobes in the environment and putting those bacteria to use in industry. He develops useful microbial catalysts for biofuel production from sustainable crops and has extended our knowledge of microbial diversity by isolating a number of new genera and species with novel physiologies. He helped define the phylogeny of bacteria. In this podcast, I talk with Dr. Tanner about his work producing biofuels from burnt plant material, the future of biofuels in the U.S., whether bacterial systematics might be forced to change in light of new research on recombination, and about his approach to teaching microbiology.