Research Projects

Bacteria remarkably adapt themselves to diverse habitats ranging from plant roots to human gut that requires the need for survival strategies. To survive in such diverse habitats, bacteria must keep up with the ongoing evolutionary arms race and evolve with better strategies to outcompete bacteriophages as well as other rival bacteria . One such strategy that the microbial population employs to ward off rival bacteria is the Type VI secretion systems (T6SS) . The T6SS is a spear gun that delivers toxic effectors into cells in close vicinity . My laboratory at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bengaluru studies Salmonella pathogenesis focussing on several aspects that include the intravacuolar lifestyle of the pathogen, the mechanism of pathogenesis and metabolism, vaccine development , and quorum sensing. While we have extensively worked on Type III secretion systems (T3SS), the T6SS in Salmonella remains largely unexplored pertaining to the available literature. We propose to investigate the Salmonella T6SS structure, its role in intracellular survival, gut microbiota interactions as well as the clinical application in terms of engineering T6SS as programmed antimicrobials. Using an interdisciplinary approach, we will combine microbiology, structural biology, molecular biology, and cell biology to advance T6SS-based antimicrobial strategies