News From the Lab
December 20, 2024
Today is a snowy day in Pittsburgh—an inviting moment to reflect on another year of exciting biology in the lab, powered by the smart, collegial, and hard-working team of students, technicians, and clinical trainees who have spent time with us. As we celebrate the season, we look forward to more discoveries in 2025 and remain grateful for the scientific, medical, and social communities of which we are a part.
October 23, 2024
Hearty congratulations to new Hooven lab graduate student Lizzie Giacobe for winning the Outstanding Poster Award at the University of Pittsburgh Biomedical Graduate Student Association Research Symposium. Lizzie is doing outstanding work using multiplex genetic approaches to understand the molecular basis of group B Streptococcus infections in pregnant women and babies. Great work, Lizzie!
August 19, 2024
Last week, members of Hooven Lab (Sophia Carlin, Gideon Hillebrand, and Lizzie Giacobe) enjoyed attending the Streptococcal Biology Gordon Research Conference in Newry, Maine. The talks and posters were terrific, and it was great to catch up with colleagues from around the globe. Special congratulations to Gideon, whose research on using library-based screens to investigate group B Streptococcus adaptations to the bloodstream was selected for a platform presentation.
June 1, 2024
This summer, Hooven Lab is hosting two excellent undergraduate students. Heather Stephenson (left) is a rising University of Pittsburgh junior who is continuing a project she started during the academic year. She joins us through the Summer Research Internship Program (SRIP) through UPMC Children’s Hospital. Rebekah Fowler (right) came to us through the University of Pittsburgh Summer Undergraduate Research Program (SURP—are you keeping track of these abbreviations?!). Both are doing a great job on group B Streptococcus studies, enjoying Pittsburgh, and bringing their enthusiasm and excitement to our group.
May 5, 2024
Here is news of a recent publication of data generated with esteemed colleagues Eldin Jašarević and Crissy Megli, along with their research teams, at Magee-Womens Research Institute. The paper, in Microbiology Spectrum, describes changes in GBS reproductive tract colonization in response to dietary fat and fiber content. It was a pleasure to work on this project and we’re happy to share our results!
March 19, 2024
We were very happy to host an esteemed colleague and collaborator, Dr. Nardhy Gomez-Lopez from Washington University in St. Louis, to give a lecture at the weekly Rangos Research Seminar held at Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh. Her superb talk, “Novel Immunotherapies to Prevent Preterm Birth and Mitigating Adverse Neonatal Outcomes Resulting from In Utero Sterile Inflammation,” was a tour de force review of her pioneering work on the mechanism and effects of sterile inflammation during pregnancy. It was great to show her Pittsburgh and to enjoy hearing about her current work and future plans!
FEBRUARY 9, 2024
Gideon Hillebrand, our talented third-year graduate student, gave an excellent presentation on his research at the Pittsburgh Area Microbial Pathogenesis (PAMP) seminar series. Members from Hooven lab took a field trip across town to Carnegie Mellon University to listen and cheer. It was lots of fun and great science.
December 1, 2023
We are pleased to announce publication of a joint project between our lab and our collaborative partners at N.Y.U. and University of Maryland. This paper describes our NIAID-funded effort to develop a publicly available, indexed library of defined group B Streptococcus (GBS) mutants to advance the study of how GBS genes contribute to serious infections during pregnancy and the neonatal period. Thank you to everyone whose hard work made this significant undertaking possible!
October 21, 2023
This year’s International Symposium on Streptococcus Agalactiae Disease (ISSAD) was held in Rio de Janeiro. Tom Hooven and graduate student Gideon Hillebrand made the trip to share our work with—and learn from—new contacts from around the world. We also enjoyed catching up with old friends in the field of group B Streptococcus, including University of South Florida neonatologist and collaborator, Tara Randis (pictured with us atop Corcovado). It was a great conference and we were very happy to attend and observe the amazing progress toward understanding and preventing group B Streptococcus disease in moms and babies.
August 15, 2023
Late summer brings some departures and new arrivals in Hooven lab. On the one hand, we are sorry to bid good luck to two foundational members of the group who are now moving on. Kathy Gopalakrishna (top left) has departed for California, where she will be continuing as a postdoc at CalTech. And Hema Bhavana (top right) is leaving to earn her PhD at Penn State. It’s hard to overstate how great they’ve been, as scientists and people. We’ll miss them. We’re delighted, however, to welcome Hayley Varela (bottom left) and Sophia Carlin (bottom right). Hayley is a second-year neonatology fellow who will be doing a project examining molecular factors that contribute to group B Streptococcus binding to intestinal epithelial cells. Sophia is our new lab technician and manager, who will be busy with any number of things. Welcome to you both!
June 9, 2023
We invite you to read our most recent paper, published today in Communications Biology. This is a detailed look at the group B Streptococcus CRISPR-Cas system, which we show can be bioengineered for rapid, reliable, targeted repression of gene expression. We also delve into molecular mechanisms underlying CRISPR-Cas modulation of non-targeted genes. This was a big project that opens some exciting new doors.
April 28, 2023
It was such a pleasure to join post-doc Kathy Gopalakrishna in Washington, D.C. and to watch her present her group B Streptococcocus research at the Pediatric Academic Societies meeting. Congratulations, Kathy! Great job.
April 19, 2023
Just dropped: a new episode of UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh’s own podcast, “That’s Pediatrics,” featuring Dr. Tom Hooven discussing newborn bacterial infections and the lab’s efforts to find new ways to prevent and treat them. This was a fun way to share our goals and some recent successes with a wider audience!
February 1, 2023
We are starting 2023 hosting first-year University of Pittsburgh Program in Microbiology and Immunology PhD candidate Mia Van Allen, pictured here in the lab with graduate student colleague Gideon Hillebrand. Mia is spending her rotation learning molecular strategies for bacterial quantification in infection models and honing techniques to investigate group B Streptococcus virulence during pregnancy.
October 1, 2022
Check out our new paper in Pathogens, which describes placental nitric oxide production and its effects on pregnancy during maternal group B Streptococcus infection.
July 28, 2022
We enjoyed hosting Ricarda Hill, a rising junior at Oberlin College, who joined the lab as a Summer Research Internship Program participant this year. Ricarda did great work studying surface molecules on group B Streptococcus that contribute to adhesion and may promote neonatal infection.
May 23, 2022
One last presentation for the road…Mary Keith finished up her Hooven lab tour of duty with a poster presentation at the American Society for Reproductive Immunology annual meeting in Nashville. She is starting a new position this summer as Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at Vanderbilt University.
April 14, 2022
University of Pittsburgh graduate student Gideon Hillebrand made the wise decision to join our group for his Ph.D. thesis project. Gideon recently finished his first year in the University of Pittsburgh Graduate Program in Microbiology and Immunology (PMI). He spent eight weeks in Hooven Lab learning to assay and manipulate Cas9 enzyme activity in group B Streptococcus, and will continue to expand on this work moving forward. Welcome, Gideon!
March 25, 2022
We invite your to read a new paper in BMC Bioinformatics written by Tom Hooven and colleagues in the Columbia University Department of Computer Science. Using advanced machine learning techniques on two large, historical cohorts of neonatal patients, the group showed that analysis of the evolving preterm intestinal microbiota could be used to generate early, accurate predictions of the catastrophic disease necrotizing enterocolitis.
January 4, 2022
Check out this new paper in Journal of Infectious Diseases from Adam Ratner’s group at NYU (coauthored by Tom Hooven). Through careful genetic recombination, the team shows that the ability of group B Streptococcus to colonize the vaginal epithelium is influenced by the molecular makeup of the bacterial capsule. This work has implications for the future success of a GBS vaccine to prevent infection during pregnancy or the newborn period.
December 2, 2021
Hooven lab postdoc Kathy Gopalakrishna received a one-year grant from the UPMC CHP Research Advisory Council to support her ongoing investigations of group B Streptococcus surface proteins and their role in colonization and invasion of neonates. Congratulations, Kathy!
November 11, 2021
Mary Keith continued her string of accepted abstracts and excellent presentations about her work on group B Streptococcus and nitric oxide, this time attending the American Academy of Pediatrics Section on Neonatal-Perinatal Medicine conference in Bonita Springs, FL.
september 1, 2021
Another member joins the Hooven lab! Michael Sobol is currently a sophomore at Pitt, where he’s studying neuroscience and politics/philosophy. Truly a renaissance man, Mike is undertaking work in the lab to examine potential genome-wide influences of the CRISPR/Cas9 system in group B Streptococcus. Welcome aboard, Mike!
July 30, 2021
This summer it’s been a privilege to host University of Pittsburgh undergraduate Alyssa Peters, who has been working on a group B Streptococcus project as part of the Children’s Hospital Summer Research Internship Program (SRIP). This week Alyssa presented her study at a program symposium. She’s done a great job with the science and gave visitors to her poster a clear and lively explanation of her findings. Congratulations, Alyssa!
June 8, 2021
We’re pleased to share a new paper just published in mBio, where it was an Editor’s Pick. This study of Staphylococcus aureus genes that contribute to bacterial fitness in models of pneumonia was the product of a collaboration with Dane Parker’s lab at Rutgers University.
June 2, 2021
This week we welcome two new scientists to the Hooven lab. Alyssa Peters (left) is a University of Pittsburgh undergraduate spending her summer with our group as a research intern. Camilla Lima (right) recently arrived from Brazil. She will spend the rest of 2021 learning protein purification techniques that we hope will lead to new discoveries about how group B Streptococcus causes infections.
May 18, 2021
Happy birthday to Hooven lab postdoc Kathy Gopalakrishna! It was a pleasure to convene for presents, cake, and one of the first group photos we’ve been able to take since the pandemic began.
May 11, 2021
Congratulations and bravo to neonatal-perinatal medicine fellow Mary Keith, whose abstract “MrvR, a Group B Streptococcus Transcription Factor that Controls Multiple Virulence Traits” was selected for presentation in the Pediatric Infectious Disease Society’s Top Abstracts session at the annual SPR/PAS meeting. Mary is pictured above, responding online to an audience question after her remote presentation. Well done, Dr. Keith!
March 9, 2021
Check out our new paper in PLOS Pathogens, “Genome-Wide fitness analysis of group B Streptococcus in human amniotic fluid reveals a transcription factor that controls multiple virulence traits.” This study describes discovery and initial characterization of a group B Streptococcus transcription factor that promotes bacterial survival in human amniotic fluid and a tendency to cause serious infections. This work was the product of dedicated teamwork from contributors across the country. We’re proud to share our findings with the world!
march 5, 2021
Hooven lab scientist and neonatal-perinatal medicine fellow Mary Keith received a Clinical Trainee Research Award this week from the UPMC Magee-Womens Hospital Research Institute. Her project involves using genetic screens and models of bacterial colonization and infection to understand the interaction between group B Streptococcus and nitric oxide in host tissues. Congratulations, Mary!
February 15, 2021
This month we are pleased to welcome Hemanjani “Hema” Bhavana, BS, MS to the lab. Hema joins us as a research technician, bringing extensive, relevant experience related to large mutant library creation and maintenance. Before moving to Pittsburgh, she did excellent work in two labs at Baylor College of Medicine. She is quickly learning tricks of the bacteriology trade and we look forward to working together on exciting group B Streptococcus pathogenesis projects in the months and years to come.
