This Presidential Young Investigator Award is being made to Dr. Ralph Isberg, a newly appointed Assistant Professor of Microbiology at Tufts University School of Medicine. His graduate research, carried out at Harvard Medical School, was on the molecular mechanism responsible for the movement of transposable genetic elements from one location to another in the bacterial chromosome. The work resulted in several important publications that were considered to be highly significant in this rapidly advancing field. He then went on to do postdoctoral work in the laboratory of Dr. Stanley Falkow, at Stanford University Medical School. That work, which he is now continuing at Tufts, deals with the mechanism used by pathogenic bacteria to enter and thrive in animal cells, including macrophage cells --- important members of the immune system that normally function to protect the animal from bacterial infection. Dr. Isberg's seminal discovery was that a single bacterial gene, encoding a cell surface glycoprotein, was responsible for the infectivity of the bacteria. He elegantly demonstrated this by cloning the critical gene and genetically transferring it into the chromosome of a normally benign, non-infective bacterial species. The resulting recombinant organism subsequently acquired the ability to infect animal cells. He is continuing to apply biochemistry and genetics to solve important problems in the area of microbial pathogenicity.
