Past News & Announcements

Effective September 1, 2023, Mandy Muller was promoted to the faculty rank of associate professor with tenure.  Wilmore Webley was promoted to the rank of professor and is also the Senior Vice Provost for Equity and Inclusion at UMass Amherst.

In a recent article in iScience, Professor Barry Goodell and collaborators showed how a unique microbial chemistry allows a gel-like coating to form around many microorganisms. Once formed the gel-layer, known as the extracellular matrix or ECM, prevented the diffusion of large proteins, such as enzymes, into substrates. This finding challenges traditional microbial theory that assumes many large molecules, once secreted, can readily diffuse from microorganisms through the ECM into substrates or hosts.”

Yasu Morita, associate professor of microbiology, and his team of researchers have identified a long-sought gene that plays a critical role in the growth and survival of the tuberculosis (TB) pathogen. The discovery offers a potential target for drug therapies for a deadly disease that has few effective treatments. Yasu Morita, senior author, along with Malavika Prithviraj and Takehiro Kado, lead authors, recently had their findings published in mBio.

Yasu Morita, Associate Professor of Microbiology, was awarded a two-year grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to support research aimed at developing new and more effective treatments for tuberculosis (TB). Morita studies mycobacteria, a group of bacteria that is omnipresent in the soil and environment. Several species of mycobacteria cause disease, the most well-known of which is TB. After years of study spearheaded by Ph.D. candidate Ian Sparks, Morita and his team have focused in on the glycolipids located on the cell surface, which help to maintain the stability of the cell membrane.

Peter Nguyen, an undergraduate researcher in Yasu Morita's lab, was first author on a paper which reported the lab's study exploring the conditions for and effects of acylation. Lab members noticed that membrane fluidization led two membrane glycolipids (lipids with a carbohydrate attached via glycosidic bond) called phosphatidylinositol mannosides, or PIMs, to undergo acylation. The findings were recently published in the Journal of Lipid Research and were highlighted in the December issue of the ASBMB Today magazine.