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Research Phages are viruses that infect and kill bacteria and are among the most abundant entities on the planet. Through constant predation, phages exert huge evolutionary pressures on their bacterial hosts, influencing bacterial cell biology, microbial communities, and global geochemical cycles. The bacterial cell surface is a dominant factor that dictates the outcome of phage infection by determining phage host range and affecting the efficient release of phage progeny. Bacterial cell envelopes are multilayered structures that prevent osmotic lysis, dictate cell shape, act as a permeability barrier, and serve as the interface with the environment and host immune systems. |
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Bacteria from the order Mycobacteriales include several medically important pathogens such as Mycobacterium tuberculosis and Corynebacterium diphtheriae, the causative agents of tuberculosis and diphtheria, as well as the industrial workhorse and model system Corynebacterium glutamicum (Cglu). These bacteria are characterized by a particularly complex cell envelope, including a unique outer membrane called the mycomembrane, that limits the permeability of antibiotics but also serves as an attractive target for the development of novel therapeutic interventions.
The McKitterick lab focuses on (1) how the mycomembrane and other layers of the envelope are assembled and disassembled using phages to guide new discoveries and (2) isolating and characterizing new phages that infect mycolated bacteria.
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Recent publications
McKitterick AC, Evan W. Lyerly EW, Bernhardt TG. bioRxiv. 2025 June 24. doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2025.06.24.661397 Chemical Proteomics Strategies for Analyzing Protein Lipidation Reveal the Bacterial O-Mycoloylome. Banahene N, Peters-Clarke TM, Biegas KJ, Shishkova E, Hart EM, McKitterick AC, Kambitsis NH, Johnson UG, Bernhardt TG, Coon JJ, Swarts BM. J Am Chem Soc. 2024 May 1;146(17):12138-12154. doi: 10.1021/jacs.4c02278. Epub 2024 Apr 18. PMID: 38635392 McKitterick AC, Bernhardt TG. Elife. 2022 Nov 9;11:e79981. doi: 10.7554/eLife.79981. PMID: 36350124 |