Bart Hazes

Biography

Associate Professor, Dept. of Medical Microbiology & Immunology  

Research Interest

    My research goal is to understand the function of disease associated proteins at a structural level. Many diseases originate from the function or dysfunction of proteins. For instance, pathogens depend on the proper function of numerous virulence factors to infect their hosts. Conversely, many genetic diseases are caused by the improper function of proteins. To combat these diseases we need to have a detailed understanding of the protein(s) involved. It is becoming increasingly clear that a full understanding of protein function requires characterization of their properties, a structural understanding of the molecular mechanisms that underlie those properties, and mutagenesis to probe the contributions of individual residues. It is my intention to form protein structure-function research teams with laboratories that have a long-standing interest in a particular protein or protein family. In this team, my laboratory will use protein crystallography to provide the structural foundation whereas the partner will use their expertise to probe the functional aspects of the protein. A good example of this approach is the ongoing research on Pseudomonas aeruginosa pilins in collaboration with Dr. Randy Irvin. Pilins are fiber-forming bacterial adhesins and over 20 years of biochemical data has been accumulated on this protein family. Last year I determined the crystal structure of the first P. aeruginosa pilin and we now have reasonable hypotheses for many of the previous observations.