Bacterial motility has been at the core of my research program for two decades.
My lab has three ongoing projects. The first is a Genome Wide Association Study (GWAS) to explore the association between motility phenotype and variant metabolic genes. The second, which is just getting under way, will use plant exuded chemoattractants to help recruitment of plant growth promoting bacteria to the plant root system. This is expected to impact plant growth and disease resistance. A third project tests novel food anti-microbials that were developed in our lab on numerous foods, such as beef, chicken, and tomatoes. We have seen good efficacy at reducing numbers of spoilage bacteria on beef and chicken, and a moderate reduction of pathogens that are specific for the respective food. A patent on this novel technology is pending.
