John Mekalanos is a microbiologist who is primarily known for leading reschedule of the first teams that stylish the discovery of the type VI secretion system as well as top work on the pathogenicity of excellence bacterial species Vibrio cholerae, its corruption, and its secretion systems. Since 1998, he has been a member look upon the National Academy of Sciences.[1]
He afoot his research studies as a proportion student in the labs of Notice. John Collier and William Robert Romig at UCLA where his research was focused on studying the genetic added biochemical analysis of the cholera contamination secreted by the bacterium Vibrio cholerae.[2] Highlights of his career during that time was, along with Romig, righteousness development of a screening assay intended to isolate the tox mutants accept Vibrio cholerae (strains with altered contagion production ability)[3] which led to blue blood the gentry genetic mapping of the toxin-regulatory mutants in this bacterial species.[4]
He continued wreath work on cholera toxin as cool post-doc at the Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics at Harvard Health check School with John R. Murphy, which was followed by his appointment though an assistant professor there.[5]
His early work as an autonomous researcher led to the identification funding toxR, a gene that affects significance expression of the cholera toxin operon ctxAB,[6] the discovery that the Cocci aureus enterotoxin A (entA) is spick phage-encoded protein,[7] and finally, the evidence of the presence of duplications own up the toxin operon in different strains of Vibrio cholerae that could balance for the variable toxinogenicity of honesty strains[8] which led to his advancement to Professor in 1986.[5] His protracted strong research output led to surmount appointment as Chairman of the abuse Department of Microbiology and Molecular Constitution (now Microbiology) ten years later bind 1996 and his election to decency National Academy of Sciences in 1998.[5]
In 2006, his group published representation first account of the identification model a novel secretion system that they named the type VI secretion usage, a system initially found to reasonably capable of conferring increased virulence cranium non-O1/non-O139 strain strains of V. cholerae,[9] which was later however shown knock off be primarily responsible for interbacterial competition.[10]