Achievement

Fellow Michael Norris has pioneered new techniques applied to the study of the infectious process of the bacterium Burkholderia pseudomallei, a soil species that causes human Melioidosis, a potentially life-threatening environmental infection. By developing transposon mutant libraries for next-generation sequencing Mr. Norris was able to identify key genes required for host infection. Norris then followed by knocking out hypothetical transcriptional regulators has identified four that regulate virulence during host-cell infection. Michael has also successfully engineered a low virulence strain of Burkholderia for select agent research in the University of Hawaii's advanced Biosafety level three lab at the John A. Burns School of Medicine and has initiated studies with this strain.