Jeffrey Hall

E-mail: hall1119@umn.edu

Year entered: 2008

Thesis Advisor: Yinduo Ji

Degrees received:
B.S., Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR

Honors and Awards:

• COGS Student Representative to the CBS Policy and Review Board

Thesis research:
The opportunistic pathogen Staphylococcus aureus is a major source of hospital and community acquired bacterial infections, causing minor skin infections to life threatening bacterial sepsis. S. aureus has acquired resistance to most antibiotics and thus, the need to indentify novel antibiotics to combat infections is urgent. Research in the Ji lab focuses on regulation of toxins, identification and characterization of unknown genes, and the characterization of essential two-component signal transduction systems (TCS). S. aureus uses numerous TCSs to sense the surrounding environment and modulate gene expression. Many of the S. aureus toxins and virulence genes are regulated by these TCSs. My thesis research is focused on identifying protein-protein interactions of several of these essential TCSs, yycFG, yhcSR, and saeRS, using a yeast-two-hybrid system. In the future I would like to develop a S. aureus hybrid system to facilitate the identification of protein interactions in a more physiological relevant environment. The goal is to identify and understand the protein interactions of these essential TCSs in hopes of identifying novel targets for antibiotic drug screening.

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