Kim Orth
The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center
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Primary Section: 44, Microbial Biology Secondary Section: 21, Biochemistry Membership Type:
Member
(elected 2020)
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Biosketch
Dr. Orth obtained a BS in Biochemistry from Texas A&M University and a MS in Biochemistry from UCLA. After obtaining my PhD in Biological Chemistry at UT Southwestern Medical Center, she moved with her husband to the University of Michigan. Over the course of 7 years at University of Michigan, she had multiple productive postdocs in various fields while becoming a working mother of two. . During her final postdoc at the University of Michigan, she discovered the field of host-pathogen interactions. After two years of working in this field, she accepted faculty positions in 2001 at UT Southwestern Medical Center in the Department of Molecular Biology and became an Earl A. Forsythe Chair in Biomedical Science. She received a number of awards: Arnold and Mabel Beckman Young Investigator Award (2003); Burroughs Wellcome Investigator in Pathogenesis of Infectious Disease (2006); Welch Foundation Norman Hackerman Award in Chemical Science (2010); TAMEST; Edith & Peter O’Donnell Award in Science (2011); ASBMB Young Investigator Award (2012); Elected to the American Academy of Microbiology (2016); ASBMB Merck Award (2018); National Academy of Sciences (2020). In 2015, she became an Investigator for HHMI.
Research Interests
My lab is interested in elucidation the activity of virulence factors from pathogenic bacteria so that we can gain novel molecular insight into eukaryotic signaling systems. The marine bacterium Vibrio parahaemolyticus is the worldwide leading cause of seafood-borne acute gastroenteritis. We are working on the two V. parahaemolyticus type 3 secretion systems (T3SS1 and T3SS2) and their bacterial effectors to understand how signaling systems in the eukaryotic host can be manipulated by these bacterial pathogens. Each of the two T3SSs uses a unique repertoire of effectors to manipulate host signaling. The first T3SS1 is thought to be used maintain V. parahaemolyticus? survival in the environment, while the second T3SS2 is used for pathogenesis in an animal host. For decades, this pathogen has been studied exclusively as an extracellular bacterium. However, recent studies from our lab have revealed the pathogen?s ability to invade and replicate within host cells using the second T3SS2. These studies have elucidated novel evolutionarily conserved mechanism that used by both host and pathogen. One of these, AMPylation, is an important mechanism used for maintaining homeostasis by all metazoan cells when under stress. Our work at UT Southwestern is accomplished using a broad range of tools, including biochemistry, molecular microbiology, protein chemistry, structural biology, yeast genetics, cell biology and more.
