Dr Culyba's lab is focused on understanding how bacteria adapt to antibiotics and evolve antibiotic resistance. We fuse molecular and biochemical methodologies with experimental microbial evolution to study mutational phenomena and bacterial adaptation. There are two major areas of study in the lab: 1) We use Escherichia coli to study the bacterial SOS response, a pathway containing promutagenic activities that is linked to acquired resistance phenotypes; 2) We utilize clinical isolates of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) to study the evolution of antibiotic tolerance pathways in vivo. The goal of our work is to understand the molecular mechanisms underpinning this rapid evolution in order to devise interventions to inhibit adaptation to antibiotics.
*Currently accepting graduate students