Principal Investigator Katharina Ribbeck
Project Website http://biogels.mit.edu/
Host-Microbe Interactions in Mucus – From Mechanism to Application -- Mucus is an important but understudied barrier that lines an enormous surface area in our body (2000 square feet in the intestine alone). Our goal is to understand the role of mucus in health and disease. Specifically, we aim to understand how mucus barriers exclude, or allow, passage of different molecules and pathogens, and the mechanisms pathogens have evolved to penetrate mucus barriers.
The laboratory works in three areas of mucus biology
(1) Mucus and Microbes: Mucus is home to trillions of microbes that form our microbiota and regulates their interactions with the host. Our goal is to identify the mechanisms mucus has evolved to control problematic pathogens, preventing them from causing harm. Our work has begun to reveal that mucus, and specifically its gel-forming mucin polymers, are key host players in the regulation of microbial virulence that can suppress a range of virulence traits in microbes, such as quorum sensing, the formation of biofilms, and horizontal gene transfer. The mission is to guide new strategies to target infections, neutralize microbial virulence, and the design of anti-biofilm coatings for implants.
(2) Diagnostics: The physicochemical properties of mucus barriers are closely related to health and disease, and the pathological onset of mucus barrier dysfunction can lead to a number of devastating pulmonary, gastrointestinal and urogenital conditions. Our goal is to establish structure-function relationships between mucus’ physicochemical properties and epithelial health to better understand and predict disease progression on mucosal epithelia, and direct the design of intervention strategies.
(3) Transport: Any device or drug in the gut, the reproductive tract or the eye is immersed in mucus, and its performance will be largely defined by this interaction. Our experimental and theoretical framework will understand the basic principles that govern selective transport through the mucus barrier. It will also provide tools to predict the trafficking and fate of pathogens and drug delivery vehicles in the mucus barrier, which has significant implications for the prediction and treatment of infectious diseases.