Bacteria are the amazing architects of life on Earth and impinge on all aspects of our lives. Their roles range from producing oxygen during the Great Oxidation Event and giving rise to our aerobic world, to influencing the course of human development and health. This influence on our bodies is seen through the beneficial role bacteria play in our microbiota, the body’s collection of microorganisms, and in their potential to also act as pathogens that cause infections. Key to bacteria accomplishing these feats is their capacity to assemble into multicellular communities. Yet, our insight into bacterial societies is surprisingly limited, informed by just a handful of model bacterial group traits. The Mashruwala lab seeks to uncover and study bacterial biology, distinct to their life while residing in collectives, and how these behaviors help bacteria shape the world around us and influence the course of human health.

Central to the lab’s focus is understanding the molecular underpinnings of regulated cell death (RCD) in bacteria — a wholly new bacterial group behavior that Mashruwala recently discovered as a postdoctoral researcher at Princeton University.  Bacterial RCD occurs in “societies” formed by Vibrio cholerae, the human pathogen responsible for the cholera disease, and is carried out in precise spatial and temporal patterns that remarkably echo programmed cell death seen in multicellular organisms. By unraveling how bacteria orchestrate this evolutionarily ancient behavior, the Mashruwala Lab aims to reveal pivotal new biology in bacteria, leverage these findings to pioneer innovative therapeutics to curb bacterial infections, and find clues to help us better understand cell death in humans.

The lab applies an interdisciplinary strategy towards solving our research questions. We combine state-of-the-art imaging technologies and genetic perturbations, along with molecular techniques, phenotypic analyses, and automation. This approach fosters discoveries in bacterial biology, and helps us solve underlying molecular mechanisms. The Mashruawala group seeks to be bound by nothing but our creativity, driving us to engineer new approaches and technologies as needed to answer our most pressing research questions.