Research Overview

The Carlson research group seeks to address the public health emergency of antibiotic resistance. Traditional antibacterial drugs directly kill bacteria, which results in the rapid evolution of resistance. Our innovative approach is to instead block the ability of bacteria to sense and respond to their surroundings. We are working to dramatically expand the community's understanding of how bacteria interact with their environment and how this can be disrupted to weaken a pathogen’s ability to cause disease.

Our research is highly multidisciplinary - members gain expertise in probe and inhibitor design and synthesis, mass spectrometry, biochemistry, proteomics and metabolomics, molecular biology, and microbiology.