Ankur Dalia

Ankur Dalia is an associate professor of biology. His work largely focuses on horizontal gene transfer in bacterial species. Specifically, his group works on one mechanism of HGT termed “natural transformation.”

During natural transformation, bacteria take up free DNA from the environment and then integrate it into their genome, which can foster the spread of antibiotic resistance and virulence factors in bacterial pathogens. Thus, a major focus of the Dalia lab is to understand the mechanism and regulation of this process using the cholera pathogen Vibrio cholerae as a model system. Also, his group exploits natural transformation to develop novel tools for genome editing.

Areas of Expertise

Microbiology, bacteriology, genetics, molecular biology, host-pathogen interactions, genome engineering, genome editing, metabolic engineering.

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