Hualiang Pi, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Microbial Pathogenesis and a member of the Yale Microbial Sciences Institute, has been awarded a grant from the Searle Scholars Program. The program supports high-risk, high-reward research across a broad range of scientific disciplines. Grants are $300,000 for a three-year term with $100,000 payable each year of the grant. The Searle Scholars Program is funded through the Searle Funds at The Chicago Community Trust and administered by Kinship Foundation.
The Pi lab will use the funds to examine iron biomineralization and bacterial organelle assembly in the gut. It had long been thought that membrane-bound organelles are unique to eukaryotic cells, while “primitive” bacterial cells lack such organelles. However, recent findings from the Pi group and others overturn this notion, revealing that bacteria also possess membrane-bound organelles with specialized functions. One notable example pertains to the ferrosomes of Clostridioides difficile, which play a crucial role in competition between pathogen and host for the essential nutrient iron. Research in the Pi lab will investigate the molecular mechanisms of ferrosome biogenesis, how nutrient iron affects infection outcomes, and complex interactions among host, pathogen, and gut commensals. Their work stands to establish a new paradigm in microbiology by demonstrating the ability of bacteria to form membrane-bound organelles and uncovering new targets to combat hospital-acquired and antibiotic-associated intestinal infections.
For more information, please view a full list of Pi lab publications.