Antibiotic-resistance poses one of the greatest threats to human health. As antibiotics become less effective common infections become harder, or even impossible, to treat. Recent projections suggest that by 2050 antibiotic-resistant infections could cause more global deaths than cancer annually. Acinetobacter baumannii is a highly drug resistant Gram-negative bacterial pathogen that is responsible for a wide range of human infections and is the fifth leading cause of resistance-associated deaths worldwide. Several strains of A. baumannii that are resistant to all available antibiotics have been isolated from patients, leaving virtually no options to treat these infections. These facts have led the WHO to identify A. baumannii as the number one organism for which the development of new therapies is critically needed.

The Kunkle lab takes genetic approaches to elucidate the molecular mechanisms of how A. baumannii senses and responds to stress conditions encountered during infection to maintain cellular homeostasis and persists within the host environment. The goal of this work is to i) identify bacterial processes necessary for pathogenesis, ii) discover new bacterial therapeutic targets, and iii) create a framework for understanding how other pathogens persist during infection.