Alicia Mendoza
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BS in Molecular Genetics from The Ohio State University
PhD in Microbiology and Immunology from Stony Brook University
Post-doctoral Fellow in Paczkowski Laboratory at the Wadsworth Center, New York State Department of Health
My research is focused on understanding the fundamental mechanisms behind how bacterial biofilms are formed and maintained. Biofilms are communities of bacteria that work together to survive harsh environmental conditions, such as antibiotics. To fight these types of infections, there is an increasing need for new targets to combat the biofilm life cycle.
Our goal is to understand the relationship between quorum sensing (QS) and the biofilm life cycle. While it has been well characterized that QS influences biofilm formation, it is largely unknown how QS influences maturation and spatial organization of the biofilm and therefore progression and persistence of chronic diseases.
Part of this gap in knowledge is a poor understanding of how genetically identical bacteria heterogeneously signal within a population, leading to outcomes like persistent, antibiotic-resistant cells and changes in biofilm architecture. Our goal is to track how QS communication influences progression of the bacterial biofilm using a combinatorial approach of bacterial genetics and fluorescence-based reporters, high-throughput sequencing and structural biology.