Research Opportunities

The mission of the Monteith laboratory is to explore the delicate balance that exists between metabolic and inflammatory processes, and how perturbations in this equilibrium promote disease. Bacterial pathogens like Staphylococcus aureus have evolved an arsenal of virulence strategies to subvert the immune response. We seek to understand how neutrophils detect disruptions elicited by bacterial pathogens and shape their inflammatory processes like neutrophil extracellular trap (NET) release to suit the constraints of the environment. In addition, comorbidities like diabetes, obesity, and autoimmune disease associate with massive shifts in metabolic homeostasis coinciding with an increased risk for bacterial infection. We seek to decipher how these changes to metabolism affect myelopoiesis and downstream neutrophil effector function in dysregulating inflammation during infection.

Increasing our understanding of the microbial interactions has tremendous potential to improve agricultural, environmental, and human health. Our lab focuses on host and environmental microbiomes, microbial community cooperation and competition, and modulation of community function. Current lab research spans diverse biological scales, including the microbial roles in organic waste cycling, forensic microbiology, and human health. We utilize a combination of environmental sampling, laboratory models, multi-omics, and bioinformatic tools to explore the relationship between microbial diversity, microbial interactions, and ecological outcomes in free-living and host-associated systems.

The polar regions are geologically and ecologically diverse and occupy over 20% of the Earth’s land surface, including 85% of Alaska, 50-55% of Canada and Russia, 20% of China, and most of Antarctica, and Greenland. Sediments, soils, or rocks that remain at or below 0ºC at least 2 consecutive years are defined as permafrost. The permafrost is situated below the upper thin soil layer that experiences seasonal freezing and thawing and is called the active layer. Due to global temperature increase the active layer became thicker and upper permafrost horizons undergo thawing and degradation. These environmental changes (increases in air and soil temperatures) lead to environment transformation (waterlogging, oxygen deprivation, etc.) followed by reshaping of the microbial community. Current research is focused on uncovering microbial biodiversity in perennially frozen and active layer soils of the Arctic, including northern regions of Canada, Russia and Svalbard. Based on published data the temperature in the high Arctic is expected to increase. In this case the permafrost will become a major source of ancient microorganisms which could be involved in modern biogeochemical cycles and greenhouse gas production. Functional analysis of the available permafrost/active layer metagenomes will determine the metabolic potential of the microbial community. Specifically, metabolic pathways for autotrophy, production or consumption of CO2, N2O and CH4, as well as SOC-degrading enzymes, will be assayed within the genomic material. The use of specific microbiological media and amended microcosms will be based on this information. Isolation of bacterial strains will provide proof and show what kind of bacteria could easily get involved in biogeochemical processes and probably play a key role in formation of new landscapes or new types of soils. Metagenomics will link phylogenetic and functional information about the biota of low temperature environments dominated by unculturable organisms while microcosms approach will provide the advantage of allowing us to investigate under controlled conditions the effects of thawing processes on natural microbial communities.