Assistant Professor of Biology Archana Anand is collaborating with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory on a new project funded by the Department of Energy (DOE). She’s been awarded a three-year subaward of $375,000 as part of the project “Phage Foundry: A High-Throughput Platform for Rapid Design and Development of Countermeasures to Combat Emerging Drug-Resistant Pathogens.” It is part of DOE’s $112.4 million for 10 research projects in the Biopreparedness Research Virtual Environment (BRaVE) initiative.
Phages are viruses that infect bacteria. Using a multi-omics approach on a large wastewater system, researchers will guide phage isolation efforts and build a baseline understanding of the population diversity, mobile genetic elements and identify phages associated with our pathogens.
SF State will provide the environmental context for selected phages-hosts ecosystems. Specifically, researchers will shed insights on the diversity of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in wastewater microbiomes to understand the prevalence of AMR genes in specific pathogens.
The project will allow University faculty to advance undergraduate and graduate experiences. By leveraging the expertise at the Lawrence Berkeley lab, they’ll be able to integrate advanced molecular methods into microbiology courses and advanced skills required for careers in microbiology and biotechnology into labs.
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