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About Josephine (Josie) Chandler

Dr. Chandler is a postdoctoral fellow in Dr. Greenberg’s laboratory. She received a B.S. in microbiology from the University of Iowa and a Ph.D. in Microbiology from the University of Minnesota. Her Ph.D. work was with Dr. Gary M. Dunny and focused on cell-cell signaling in the opportunistic pathogen Enterococcus faecalis. During her Ph.D., Dr. Chandler was a Graduate Fellow and an NIH Minnesota Craniofacial Training Program Fellow, and received the Bacaner Research Award and the student-voted Golden Pipetman Award. Dr. Chandler began working with Dr. Greenberg in Seattle in 2006 just after his move from Iowa, where she joined forces with all the Hawkeyes that moved with him. Dr. Chandler is currently funded by an NIH individual NRSA fellowship to study quorum sensing in the closely related organisms Burkholderia mallei and Burkholderia thailandensis, and is interested in understanding how cooperative behavior evolves in bacteria.

Research

I am interested in the link between quorum sensing and cooperative behaviors that are often controlled by quorum sensing such as the production of proteases, toxins such as antibiotics, and biofilm-matrix proteins such as exopolysaccharides. I would like to know how quorum-sensing control of these behaviors is helpful in different pathogenic and non-pathogenic environments.

I study quorum sensing in Burkholderia thailandensis, a non-pathogenic member of a closely related group whose other members are the severe human pathogens B. mallei and B. pseudomallei. Each of these three encodes almost identical quorum sensing systems but have diverged to occupy very different ecological niches, and I would like to understand quorum sensing in this group to better understand how quorum sensing has evolved to be useful in each organism.

In B. thailandensis, my work led to the identification of two quorum sensing-controlled phenotypes, antibiotic production and colony wrinkling (mediated in part by exopolysaccharides).  Because antibiotics and exopolysaccharides are secreted, they are thought to be cooperative and benefit the entire population at a cost to individual producers. To understand the costs and benefits of using quorum sensing to control these behaviors I have developed two laboratory models, a dual-species competition model and a rugose colony model. In both of these models, quorum sensing provides an advantage at the population level. Using these models I can investigate the social benefit of antibiotic production and exopolysaccharide production and ask how quorum sensing may stabilize cooperation among individuals.

Josephine (Josie) Chandler, Ph.D.
Postdoctoral Fellow

Email:
jchan4 at uw.edu

Phone:
(206) 221-2850

Location:
HSB K-359

Mailing Address:
UW Box 357735
Seattle WA 98195

Shipping Address:
HSB K-359
1708 NE Pacific St
Seattle WA 98195