First name,Last name,Preferred title,Overview,Position,Department,Individual
James,Samuel,Regents Professor and Head,"Our laboratory works with the obligate intracellular bacterial pathogen, Coxiella burnetii, the etiologic agent of Q fever and a category B biothreat agent. The long-term goal of this research is to understand the molecular pathogenic mechanisms involved in the host-pathogen interaction. To accomplish this broad goal, project in the lab are designed to test the molecular mechanisms employed by both the host and pathogen. Current pathogen studies include 1) broad survey of proteins secreted via a type 4 secretion system (T4SS) followed by determination of essentiality of each substrate for virulence and detailed analysis of mechanism of host modulation 2) survey of essential virulence loci identified by specific mutant screens, and 3) definition of the relative virulence of phylogenetically distinct isolate groups.",Regents Professor and Head,Microbial Pathogenesis and Immunology,https://scholars.library.tamu.edu/vivo/display/n01c3216f
Suresh,Pillai,Professor,"Dr. Pillai's research focuses on bacterial cell-to-cell signaling, the molecular ecology of pathogens in natural and man-made ecosystems and the use of novel technologies to concentrate, detect, and decontaminate pathogens. His research on molecular microbial ecology and cell-cell signaling is targeted at understanding the complex and hitherto poorly understood relationship between microbial communities and human behavior. His research is aimed at understanding the role that the GI tract-associated microbiome has on human behavior.",Professor,Poultry Science,https://scholars.library.tamu.edu/vivo/display/n3009b050
Arul,Jayaraman,Professor,,Professor,Chemical Engineering,https://scholars.library.tamu.edu/vivo/display/n7deb8230
Deborah,Siegele,Associate Professor,"Phenotypes are observable characteristics of an organism that result from the expression of a particular genotype in a particular environment. Examples of phenotypic traits in microbes are motility, sporulation, ability to perform anaerobic respiration, and resistance/sensitivity to an antibiotic.
Until recently, phenotypic information has been captured as free text descriptions in research papers. Ambiguities in natural language confound attempts to retrieve information across sources. For example, ""serotype"" and ""serovar"" both refer to the same phenotype, but a simple text-based query with either word alone would miss the other. Or a single term, such as ""sporulation"" is used to refer to multiple, distinct processes in different organisms. Issues such as these hamper the ability to integrate different phenotypic data sets for the same organism or to use phenotypic information in one organism to predict possible phenotypes in another organism. Ideally, phenotype information should be stored in a consistent, computable format for ease of data integration and mining.
Controlled vocabularies are used to provide both consistent terminology and a structured data format for the capture of biological information. Ontologies are controlled vocabularies of defined terms with unique identifiers and precise relationships to each other. There are phenotype ontologies available for many eukaryotic organisms, including fungi. However, when the OMP project was initiated, none of the existing ontologies was appropriate to comprehensively capture phenotypes for Bacteria or Archaea or to enable comparisons across microbial taxa.
The Siegele lab and our collaborators at TAMU and the Univ. of Maryland (IGS) are developing a formal Ontology of Microbial Phenotypes (OMP). Our lab is focused on term development and annotating microbial phenotypes. OMP can be accessed at microbialphenotypes.org. Releases of OMP are available at github.com/microbialphenotypes.",Associate Professor,Biology,https://scholars.library.tamu.edu/vivo/display/ne333d587
Joerg,Steiner,Professor,"My veterinary career has mainly focused on two aspects, patient care and clinically-relevant research. As a veterinary clinician and clinical teacher I am exposed to a wide variety of canine and feline patients with complex medical conditions. These patients serve as a constant source of new clinical problems that beckon to be studied further. Sometimes these studies are merely clinical, relating to characterization of an uncommon condition, diagnosis of a difficult-to-diagnose condition, or a novel therapeutic approach to a well-described condition. In other instances studies that are spurred by clinical cases are more basic-science based, utilizing state-of-the-art technologies to further evaluate the etiology or pathogenesis of a disease. In some instances, studies may provide comparative aspects related to experimental animals, such as rodents or primates, or even to human patients with similar conditions. I believe that my role as a mentor can be unique in that I can help graduate students bridge the gap between science and clinical aspects and between veterinary and human medical interests - giving us further opportunities to advance the concept of one-health.","Professor||Director, Gastrointestinal Laboratory",School of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences||Small Animal Clinical Sciences,https://scholars.library.tamu.edu/vivo/display/nf4de66a0