News of the College November 2004

E-coli image Biology’s Jay Mellies receives $227,500 for E. coli research

The National Institute of Health (NIH) has awarded a $227,500 Academic Research Enhancement Award to Jay Mellies, associate professor of biology, for his continuing research on the E. coli strain known as Enteropathogenic Escheriachia coli (EPEC), responsible for an estimated1 million infant diarrheal deaths in the developing world each year.

Mellies’ research team will continue studying how the master regulator protein LER controls the disease process on the molecular level. The long-term goal is to use this knowledge to develop effective therapeutics for the treatment of this and related infections.

In the United States, EHEC, a pathogen related to EPEC, is of particular concern in food safety and public health because it causes many outbreaks of bloody diarrhea due to contaminated meat products, produce, and water. Mellies’ research on EPEC may provide insight into disease caused not only by EHEC but also Shigella and Salmonella species that cause significant disease annually.

Over the past three years, Mellies has received other significant funding for his research, including $230,323 from the Defense Advanced Research Program Agency in 2003 to develop a small animal model of EPEC infection using the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans, a seed grant from the Medical Research Foundation of Oregon and a grant of $143,667, also from the NIH in 2001.

At Reed since 1999, Mellies received his bachelor’s degree in biochemistry from the University of California at Davis in 1986. He earned his Ph.D. in microbiology from Davis in 1994. From 1994 to 1997, Mellies was an Alexander von Humboldt Fellow at the Max-Planck-Institute for Infectious Biology in Tuebingen, Germany, and a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Maryland School of Medicine from 1997 to 1999. Read more information about Mellies and his research work. End of Article

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Reed Magazine November 2004
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