Casey Hayslip

I am currently a graduate student in the Department of Biological Sciences at Sam Houston State University. My thesis topic is my current research project, that involves bacterial quorum sensing and its disruption by algae. The current idea to prevent antibiotic resistance and increase higher response to antibiotic therapy in bacterial infections is to disrupt the quorum sensing pathways in bacteria, which disrupts bacterial communication. With modern chemistry, we can synthesize molecules from scratch, or, since nature has a head-start on mankind, we can use the molecules found in nature. By using the second approach, I am trying to structurally identify the compounds secreted by a green algae that mimics and interferes with quorum sensing in Pseudomonas bacteria.

June 2013