Editors for Microbiology and Infectious Disease

We aim to publish studies that provide new insights into fundamental mechanisms, and cell growth and metabolism, in all microbes. We also welcome studies of all types of interactions between microorganisms in communities and between microbes and multicellular organisms, in both pathogenic and commensal interactions, including but not limited to investigations into the microbiome, microbial ecology, mycology, pathology, parasitology, and virology. Read the latest research in this subject area.
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Senior editors

  1. Neil Ferguson

    Imperial College London, United Kingdom

    Neil Ferguson is Head of the Department of Infectious Disease Epidemiology at Imperial College London, where he leads the MRC Centre for Outbreak Analysis and Modelling. His research aims to improve the understanding of epidemiological factors and population processes that shape infectious disease spread in human and animal populations. A practical focus of his work is the analysis and optimisation of intervention strategies that are aimed at reducing transmission or disease burden.

    Expertise
    Epidemiology and Global Health
    Microbiology and Infectious Disease
    Research focus
    epidemiology and infectious disease
    emerging infections
    mosquito-borne infections
    statistical and mathematical tools
  2. Wendy S Garrett

    Wendy S Garrett

    Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, United States

    Wendy Garrett is the Melvin J and Geraldine L. Glimcher Associate Professor of Immunology and Infectious Diseases at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health and an Associate Member of the Broad Institute. Her work explores host-microbiota interactions underlying mucosal immune homeostasis, gastrointestinal inflammatory disorders, and cancer. She graduated from the Yale College; received her MD PhD from Yale University and completed post-graduate training at Harvard.

    Expertise
    Immunology and Inflammation
    Microbiology and Infectious Disease
    Human Biology and Medicine
    Research focus
    host-microbiota interactions
    microbiome
    mucosal immunology
    Competing interests statement
    Wendy Garrett receives funding from the National Institutes of Health, Hoffman-LaRoche, and Groupe Danone. She is a member of the Cell Reports and Journal of Clinical Microbiology editorial boards. She consults for Janssen and serves on the scientific advisory boards of Synlogic and Evelo Biosciences.

  3. Karla Kirkegaard

    Stanford University School of Medicine, United States

    Karla Kirkegaard is the Violetta L Horton Research Professor of Genetics and former Chair of the Department of Microbiology and Immunology in the Stanford University School of Medicine. She received her PhD in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology with James C Wang at Harvard University, and performed her postdoctoral work in the laboratory of David Baltimore at the Whitehead Institute. As an Assistant and Associate Professor at the University of Colorado in Boulder, she received numerous awards, including a fellowship from the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, an American Cancer Society Young Investigator Award, a Searle Scholar Award, and sponsorship by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Karla Kirkegaard combined her interests in biochemistry, cell biology, and genetics in the study of RNA virology, using poliovirus and other positive-strand RNA viruses to understand the cell biology of viral infections and the genetics of viral variability. Since her move to Stanford University School of Medicine in 1996, her interests have focused increasingly on the impact of basic science discoveries on the transmission of viruses in infected hosts. Kirkegaard’s honors include an Ellison Foundation Senior Scholar Award in Global Infectious Disease and, in 2006, the NIH Director’s Pioneer Award, for her approach to guide the selection of antiviral targets with the goal of suppressing the drug-resistant RNA genomes that will inevitably be formed due to the high error rates of RNA replication. She has been recently elected as a Member of the National Academies of Arts and Sciences and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Her work continues to focus on the mechanisms of diversity and propagation of viruses and suppression of this diversity and spread.

    (Reproduced from http://web.stanford.edu/group/kirkegaard/karla.html)

    Expertise
    Microbiology and Infectious Disease
    Immunology and Inflammation
    Research focus
    drug resistance
    viral evolution
    dominant genes
    Experimental organism
    human
    mouse
    viruses

  4. Päivi Ojala

    University of Helsinki, Finland
    Imperial College London, United Kingdom

    Päivi Ojala is the Professor of Cancer Cell Biology at University of Helsinki and Chair of Viral Tumorigenesis at Imperial College London. She has made significant contributions to the Kaposi’s Sarcoma herpesvirus (KSHV) field and has more recently focused also on the role of lymphatic endothelial microenvironment on cancer cell metastasis. She has expertise in organotypic 3D co-culture models, cell-based high-content screens, protein kinase signalling and viral technologies. Her work has led to demonstration of restoration of p53 function by small molecule inhibitors as a therapeutic modality for KSHV-induced lymphomas, identification of host Pim kinases, nucleophosmin, and the p53-p21 axis as novel regulators of viral replication, and shown that KSHV infection reprograms lymphatic endothelial cells (LECs) to a new, more invasive cell type. They have also demonstrated that LEC interaction with melanoma cells leads to increased distant organ metastasis in vivo, which is dependent on MMP14, Notch3 and b1-integrin- Dr. Ojala holds a doctoral degree in Molecular Genetics from the University of Helsinki, and has received postdoctoral training at the Yale School of Medicine, CT, USA.

    Expertise
    Cancer Biology
    Microbiology and Infectious Disease
    Research focus
    human tumor viruses
    virus-host interactions
    tumor microenvironment
    metastasis
    Competing interests statement
    Päivi Ojala receives funding from the Academy of Finland, Sigrid Juselius Foundation, Cancer Foundation Finland and University of Helsinki.

  5. Gisela Storz

    National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, United States

    Gisela Storz has been an Investigator in the Eunice Kennedy Shriver Institute of Child Health and Human Development in Bethesda, Maryland since 1991. She obtained a BA in Biochemistry from the University of Colorado in 1984 and a PhD in Biochemistry from the University of California, Berkeley in 1988, where she studied the bacterial response to oxidative stress working with Bruce Ames. Her current work is focused on understanding gene regulation in response to environmental signals and elucidating the roles of small RNAs and small proteins of less than 50 amino acids in these regulatory networks. Dr. Storz was the recipient of the American Society for Microbiology Eli Lilly Award and is a member of the American Academy of Microbiology, American Academy of Arts and Sciences and US National Academy of Sciences.

    Expertise
    Microbiology and Infectious Disease
    Chromosomes and Gene Expression
    Research focus
    small noncoding RNAs
    oxidative stress
    gene regulation
    bacterial physiology
    regulatory RNAs
    Experimental organism
    E. coli
    Competing interests statement
    Gisela Storz is employed by the Intramural Program of the National Institutes of Health. She served on the Scientific Advisory Board of Max Planck Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology. In addition to being a Senior Editor for eLife, she is an Editor at RNA and on the Editorial Boards of mBio, Annual Reviews of Genetics and Microbiology Spectrum.

Reviewing editors

  1. Sonja V Albers

    University of Freiburg, Germany

    Expertise
    Microbiology and Infectious Disease
    Research focus
    Archaea
    Sulfolobus
    Haloferax

  2. Axel A Brakhage

    Leibniz Institute for Natural Product Research and Infection Biology (HKI), Germany

    Expertise
    Microbiology and Infectious Disease
    Structural Biology and Molecular Biophysics
    Research focus
    infection biology of fungi
    microbial secondary metabolism
    microbial communication
    biotechnology
    transcription factors
    macrophages
    neutrophils
    Experimental organism
    Aspergillus
    M. xanthus
    Streptomyces

  3. Melanie M Brinkmann

    Technische Universität Braunschweig, Germany

    Expertise
    Immunology and Inflammation
    Microbiology and Infectious Disease
    Research focus
    herpesviruses
    innate immunity
    intracellular trafficking

  4. Jean-Laurent Casanova

    The Rockefeller University, United States

    Expertise
    Genetics and Genomics
    Microbiology and Infectious Disease
    Immunology and Inflammation
    Research focus
    Human genetics of infectious diseases
    primary immunodeficiencies
    Experimental organism
    human

  5. Flaminia Catteruccia

    Harvard School of Public Health, United States

    Expertise
    Microbiology and Infectious Disease
    Research focus
    vector biology
    malaria
    vector-plasmodium interactions
    reproductive biology
    Experimental organism
    A. gambiae

  6. Isaac Chiu

    Harvard Medical School, United States

    Expertise
    Microbiology and Infectious Disease
    Immunology and Inflammation
    Neuroscience
    Research focus
    neuroimmunology
    pain
    microglia
    somatosensation
    infection

  7. Jon Clardy

    Harvard Medical School, United States

    Expertise
    Biochemistry and Chemical Biology
    Ecology
    Microbiology and Infectious Disease
    Research focus
    microbial secondary metabolism
    chemical communications
    biosynthesis
    chemical biology
    microbial chemical ecology

  8. Christine Clayton

    Zentrum fuer Molekulare Biologie der Universitaet Heidelberg (ZMBH), Germany

    Expertise
    Microbiology and Infectious Disease
    Human Biology and Medicine
    Epidemiology and Global Health
    Research focus
    trypanosomes
    mRNA degradation
    RNA-binding proteins

  9. Miles P Davenport

    University of New South Wales, Australia

    Expertise
    Immunology and Inflammation
    Microbiology and Infectious Disease
    Research focus
    virology
    immunity
    vaccines
    HIV/AIDS
    mathematical modeling
    host-pathogen interactions
    biostatistics

  10. Guangxia Gao

    Institute of Biophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China

    Expertise
    Microbiology and Infectious Disease
    Research focus
    retroviruses
    HIV-1
    virus-host interactions
    Experimental organism
    mouse
    viruses

  11. Jean Greenberg

    University of Chicago, United States

    Expertise
    Microbiology and Infectious Disease
    Plant Biology
    Research focus
    local and long distance signalling in innate immunity
    plant-microbe interactions
    bacterial pathogens
    Experimental organism
    A. thaliana
    N. benthamiana
    tomato
    Pseudomonas

  12. Peter Greenberg

    University of Washington School of Medicine, United States

    Expertise
    Microbiology and Infectious Disease
    Research focus
    microbe-microbe communication

  13. Nicola L Harris

    Monash University, Australia

    Expertise
    Immunology and Inflammation
    Microbiology and Infectious Disease
    Research focus
    type 2 immunity
    helminth infection
    microbiota
    mucosal immunology

  14. Sophie Helaine

    Imperial College London, United Kingdom

    Expertise
    Microbiology and Infectious Disease
    Research focus
    host-pathogen interaction
    bacterial pathogenesis
    persistence
    antibiotic persisters
    toxin-antitoxin systems
    Experimental organism
    Salmonella

  15. Prabhat Jha

    Saint Michael's Hospital, Canada

    Expertise
    Epidemiology and Global Health
    Microbiology and Infectious Disease
    Human Biology and Medicine
    Research focus
    epidemiology
    global health
    infectious disease and population dynamics
    randomized controlled trials

  16. Mark Jit

    London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, and Public Health England, United Kingdom

    Expertise
    Epidemiology and Global Health
    Microbiology and Infectious Disease
    Research focus
    vaccines
    infectious disease epidemiology
    mathematical modelling
    health economics
    low- and middle-income countries
    Experimental organism
    human
    vaccine-preventable pathogens
    human papillomavirus
    measles virus
    rotavirus
    influenza virus
    S. pneumoniae

  17. Bavesh Kana

    University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa

    Expertise
    Microbiology and Infectious Disease
    Research focus
    tuberculosis
    differentially culturable bacteria
    mycobacteria
    actinobacteria
    cell wall
    peptidoglycan
    peptidoglycan hydrolases
    amidase
    cell division
    cell surface remodelling
    dormancy
    latency
    Experimental organism
    M. tuberculosis
    M. smegmatis

  18. Frank Kirchhoff

    Ulm University Medical Center, Germany

    Expertise
    Epidemiology and Global Health
    Microbiology and Infectious Disease
    Research focus
    HIV
    SIV
    AIDS
    restriction factors
    accessory viral proteins
    antimicrobial peptides
    Experimental organism
    HIV
    SIV

  19. David M Knipe

    Harvard Medical School, United States

    Expertise
    Microbiology and Infectious Disease
    Research focus
    DNA viruses
    epigenetic regulation
    latent infection
    innate and intrinsic immunity
    vaccines
    Experimental organism
    mouse

  20. Urszula Krzych

    Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, United States

    Expertise
    Epidemiology and Global Health
    Immunology and Inflammation
    Microbiology and Infectious Disease
    Research focus
    malaria
    adaptive immunity
    vaccines

  21. Michael Laub

    Massachusetts Institute of Technology, United States

    Expertise
    Cell Biology
    Microbiology and Infectious Disease
    Research focus
    bacterial cell cycle
    toxin-antitoxin systems
    signal transduction
    protein evolution
    chromosome organisation
    Experimental organism
    E. coli
    C. crescentus

  22. Elena Levashina

    Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology, Germany

    Expertise
    Microbiology and Infectious Disease
    Research focus
    malaria ecology
    mosquito immune system
    Experimental organism
    P. falciparum

  23. Wenhui Li

    National Institute of Biological Sciences, China

    Expertise
    Microbiology and Infectious Disease
    Research focus
    virus infection
    hepatitis b/d virus
    receptor
    antivirals
    Experimental organism
    human
    mouse
    viruses

  24. Marc Lipsitch

    Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, United States

    Expertise
    Epidemiology and Global Health
    Microbiology and Infectious Disease
    Research focus
    pathogen transmission modeling
    evolution of pathogens
    vaccine epidemiology
    antimicrobial resistance
    research ethics
    Experimental organism
    S. pneumoniae

  25. Tam Mignot

    Aix-Marseille University, France

    Expertise
    Microbiology and Infectious Disease
    Physics of Living Systems
    Research focus
    signal transduction
    motility
    bacterial development
    bacterial cell biology
    Experimental organism
    M. xanthus

  26. Shaeri Mukherjee

    University of California, San Francisco, United States

    Expertise
    Cell Biology
    Microbiology and Infectious Disease
    Research focus
    membrane traffic
    host-pathogen interactions
    endoplasmic reticulum
    Experimental organism
    L. pneumophila

  27. Dianne Newman

    California Institute of Technology, United States

    Expertise
    Microbiology and Infectious Disease
    Research focus
    metabolism
    bioenergetics
    electron transfer
    biofilms
    phenazines
    Experimental organism
    P. aeruginosa

  28. Phil Newmark

    Morgridge Institute for Research, University of Wisconsin-Madison, United States

    Expertise
    Developmental Biology
    Microbiology and Infectious Disease
    Research focus
    Planarian
    regeneration
    Schistosoma
    germ cells

  29. Thorsten Nurnberger

    University of Tübingen, Germany

    Expertise
    Cell Biology
    Microbiology and Infectious Disease
    Plant Biology
    Research focus
    innate immunity
    plant-microbe interactions
    plant immunity
    Experimental organism
    A. thaliana

  30. Kim Orth

    University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, United States

    Expertise
    Biochemistry and Chemical Biology
    Microbiology and Infectious Disease
    Research focus
    bacterial pathogenesis
    Type III secretion
    host-pathogen interactions
    signaling
    AMPylation
    Experimental organism
    Vibrio spp
    E. coli
    human
    S. cerevisiae

  31. Julie Overbaugh

    Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, United States

    Expertise
    Microbiology and Infectious Disease
    Research focus
    HIV neutralizing antibodies
    HIV ADCC antibodies
    HIV transmission
    interferon and HIV restriction

  32. Paul Rainey

    Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology, Germany

    Expertise
    Ecology
    Evolutionary Biology
    Microbiology and Infectious Disease
    Plant Biology
    Research focus
    adaptive radiation
    evolution of individuality
    evolutionary genetics
    ecological genetics
    emergence of infectious diseases
    forecasting evolution

  33. Isabel Rodriguez-Barraquer

    University of California, San Francisco, United States

    Expertise
    Epidemiology and Global Health
    Microbiology and Infectious Disease
    Research focus
    dengue
    malaria
    Zika
    vector-bone diseases
    serology
    modeling
    Experimental organism
    human

  34. Antonis Rokas

    Vanderbilt University, United States

    Expertise
    Evolutionary Biology
    Microbiology and Infectious Disease
    Research focus
    phylogenomics
    genome evolution in fungi and animals
    evolution of fungal secondary/specialized metabolic pathways
    evolution of mammalian pregnancy
    eukaryotic genome evolution
    Experimental organism
    S. cerevisiae
    mammals
    Aspergillus

  35. Sara L Sawyer

    University of Colorado Boulder, United States

    Expertise
    Evolutionary Biology
    Microbiology and Infectious Disease
    Immunology and Inflammation
    Research focus
    viral emergence and zoonosis
    host-virus arms races
    innate immunity
    dengue
    HIV
    genomics
    Experimental organism
    human
    mouse
    viruses

  36. John W Schoggins

    University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, United States

    Expertise
    Microbiology and Infectious Disease
    Immunology and Inflammation
    Research focus
    virology
    innate immunity at the virus-host interface

  37. Viviana Simon

    The Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, United States

    Expertise
    Epidemiology and Global Health
    Microbiology and Infectious Disease
    Research focus
    viral-host interactions
    retroviral restriction factors
    HIV drug resistance

  38. Dominique Soldati-Favre

    University of Geneva, Switzerland

    Expertise
    Human Biology and Medicine
    Microbiology and Infectious Disease
    Research focus
    motility
    invasion
    proteases
    adhesins
    motors
    metabolism
    signaling
    trafficking
    parasitology
    Apicomplexa
    malaria
    Experimental organism
    T. gondii

  39. Christina L Stallings

    Washington University School of Medicine, United States

    Expertise
    Microbiology and Infectious Disease
    Research focus
    mycobacteriology
    tuberculosis
    Experimental organism
    M. tuberculosis
    M. smegmatis

  40. Margaret Stanley

    University of Cambridge, United Kingdom

    Expertise
    Cancer Biology
    Microbiology and Infectious Disease
    Human Biology and Medicine
    Epidemiology and Global Health
    Research focus
    vaccines
    cervix cancer
    cervix precancer
    keratinocyte biology
    human papillomavirus
    DNA viruses
    vaccine immunology
    Experimental organism
    human

  41. Wesley Sundquist

    University of Utah School of Medicine, United States

    Expertise
    Structural Biology and Molecular Biophysics
    Microbiology and Infectious Disease
    Biochemistry and Chemical Biology
    Research focus
    virus assembly
    HIV
    ESCRT
    abscission
    innate immunity

  42. Peter Turnbaugh

    University of California, San Francisco, United States

    Expertise
    Microbiology and Infectious Disease
    Research focus
    metagenomics
    human gut microbiome
    nutrition
    pharmacology
    bacteriophages
    CRISPR-Cas systems
    gnotobiotics
    microbial metabolism
    Experimental organism
    human
    mouse

  43. Russell E Vance

    University of California, Berkeley, United States

    Expertise
    Immunology and Inflammation
    Microbiology and Infectious Disease
    Research focus
    innate immunity
    bacterial pathogenesis
    interferon
    inflammasomes
    pathogen-sensing
    Experimental organism
    mouse
    L. pneumophila
    M. tuberculosis

  44. Kevin Verstrepen

    VIB-KU Leuven Center for Microbiology, Belgium

    Expertise
    Evolutionary Biology
    Genetics and Genomics
    Microbiology and Infectious Disease
    Research focus
    yeast
    aroma
    fermentation
    genomics
    molecular evolution
    Experimental organism
    S. cerevisiae

  45. Joseph T Wade

    Wadsworth Center, United States

    Expertise
    Microbiology and Infectious Disease
    Chromosomes and Gene Expression
    Genetics and Genomics
    Research focus
    transcription
    regulatory RNA
    CRISPR
    gene regulation
    Experimental organism
    E. coli
    S. enterica
    M. smegmatis
    M. tuberculosis

  46. Blake Wiedenheft

    Montana State University, United States

    Expertise
    Chromosomes and Gene Expression
    Microbiology and Infectious Disease
    Research focus
    bacteriophages
    genome editing
    host-parasite interactions

  47. Jie Xiao

    Johns Hopkins University, United States

    Expertise
    Cell Biology
    Chromosomes and Gene Expression
    Microbiology and Infectious Disease
    Physics of Living Systems
    Research focus
    single molecule biophysics
    bacteria
    cell wall
    cell division
    gene regulation
    chromosome conformation
    Experimental organism
    B. subtilis
    E. coli
    human

  48. María Mercedes Zambrano

    CorpoGen, Colombia

    Expertise
    Microbiology and Infectious Disease
    Genetics and Genomics
    Research focus
    environmental microbiology
    microbial communities
    biodiversity
    microbiome
    antimicrobial resistance
    extreme environments

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