UGA microbiology postdoc receives Life Sciences Research Foundation Fellowship

John Ciemniecki, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Georgia, has been awarded a fellowship from the Life Sciences Research Foundation. 

The Life Sciences Research Foundation (LSRF) is a non-profit organization that supports early-career investigators by connecting them with philanthropic donors. Less than 5% of applicants receive a fellowship, which will support Ciemniecki’s salary and research expenses for three years.

Ciemniecki is a member of the research group supporting Jorge Escalante, UGA Foundation Distinguished Professor in the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences department of microbiology, which investigates the fundamental metabolic mechanisms of bacterial cells.

Since 1983, the LSRF has funded 773 outstanding postdoctoral fellows in all areas of the life sciences, and raised more than $100 million from generous industries, foundations and individuals to support this effort.

“Even though microbiology labs routinely grow bacterial cultures over the course of a few hours or days, bacteria almost never experience those fast growth rates in nature,” Ciemniecki said. “When we instead wash away all their nutrients and starve these cultures in the lab, they display a remarkable ability to survive for long periods, yet we have only vague ideas how.”

Ciemniecki’s prior graduate work was on Pseudomonas aeruginosa, a common hospital-acquired pathogen that can significantly slow its metabolism during energy-limitation.

“P. aeruginosa can stably survive at metabolic rates one thousand times slower than the rate it sustains during fast growth,” he said. “That’s like if we could survive while only taking a breath every hour and a half – it’s an astounding feat of metabolic flexibility even more extreme than animal hibernation.”

In his postdoctoral work under the support of this fellowship, Ciemniecki is studying the slow survival metabolism of Salmonella enterica, a common pathogen known to enter a highly antibiotic-tolerant state called persistence during chronic infections. 

“While we already know metabolism is typically slow in these persister cells, we know almost nothing about the bioenergetic pathways used to provide the energy needed for their survival,” he said. “The idea of this project is that if we can discover what these pathways are, we can target them and eradicate these otherwise antibiotic-tolerant cells, minimizing the risk of infection relapse and/or the development of full antibiotic resistance.”

Image: John Ciemniecki (submitted photo)