Understanding the Pathogenesis of Acid-Resistant <emp>E. coli</emp>: Computational Modeling of pH-Dependent Conformational Changes in GadB

Hannah S. Kenagy

I come from an agricultural family: one side of my family owns a 200-acre farm in Oregon and the other owns a plant nursery adjacent to my backyard in New York. Between living right next to the nursery and spending two or three weeks a year on the Oregon farm, I have been exposed to agricultural and horticultural issues my entire life. When report after report of acid-resistant E. coli outbreaks hit the news over the past few years, I became quite interested in the issue as a result of my agricultural background (and my foodie interests). I was inspired to read more about this problem and the many other problems of today’s increasingly industrialized food system . . . After working through many tutorials, during my second summer in the lab my mentor allowed me to take on a project of my own choosing and design. It was quite a daunting task to pick out a system that I wanted to study, but eventually I picked a protein system that was right in line with my agricultural interests. I chose to use the computational techniques I had learned to study a protein involved in the acid-resistance of E. coli, one of the biggest threats to the safety of our food system today.