Topics and Expertise: bacteria

Nearly every human bacterial infection—including some of the most serious, life threatening, and costly to treat—can take the form of a biofilm, in which bacteria aggregate into structured communities that enclose themselves within a secreted slime.

Bacteria generate small molecules to fend off their fellow microbes. They also produce molecules that affect the response of host organisms—including humans—to their presence. Such molecules have been a major source of antibiotics, immunosuppressants, anti-cancer agents, and other drugs.

Faculty members in the Department of Bioengineering and Therapeutic Sciences, UCSF Schools of Pharmacy and Medicine, share their research on the human microbiome and microfabricated drug delivery systems and their hopes for how their science will improve the health of patients.

Table of contents

Introduction
Budget significance
Reasons for past success
A decade of funding for bioinformatics
New drug discovery directions attract support
Research stalwarts draw funding for decades
New directions in translational research attract support
Expansion of the School’s...

Logic gates, similar to those that form the basis of silicon computing, can now be inserted into bacteria via genetic engineering, making it possible to manipulate bacteria to perform complicated tasks. This finding will ultimately enable cells to be programmed with more intricate functions,...

Christopher A. Voigt, PhD, faculty member in the UCSF School of Pharmacy, is studying how to engineer living systems to solve widespread problems of society, such as our dependence on petroleum-based fuels.

Christopher A. Voigt, PhD, UCSF School of Pharmacy scientist, and colleagues are engineering bacteria to target tumors and create images. This work is part of the emerging field of synthetic biology, which aims to create new biological parts, systems, and tools, and redesign existing biological...