CURRENT RESEARCH

Exploring metabolites in the human skin microbiome

My Ph.D. thesis project investigates the role of the human skin microbiome in protecting against fungal pathogens. The skin microbiome produces metabolites that are hypothesized to mediate microbe-microbe interactions and serve as defensive compounds upon encountering pathogens. High-throughput antimicrobial screening assays through the CETR pipeline (funding from the NIH for discovering antimicrobial compounds from symbiotic bacteria) have demonstrated that human commensal bacteria from the skin have broad antifungal activities. With microbiology, physiology, chemistry, and bioinformatics, I am determining the role of skin microbiome-derived metabolites in protecting the host against human fungal pathogens.