Ph.D.
Albany Medical College

Wolfgang Haas, Ph.D

Assistant Professor of Microbiology & Immunology in the Center for Oral Biology

Primary Appointment: Microbiology & Immunology

Secondary Appointment: Department of Dentistry

Center Affiliation: Oral Biology

GEBS Cluster Affiliations:
IMV - Immunology, Microbiology, and Vaccine Biology

Contact Information:
University of Rochester School of Medicine and Dentistry
601 Elmwood Ave, Box 611
Rochester, New York 14642
Phone: (585) 275-7722
Fax: (585) 276-0190
E-Mail: wolfgang_haas@urmc.rochester.edu

Research:
Antibiotic-Stress Response and Resistance in Streptococci

OVERVIEW

Streptococci cause various diseases in humans, ranging from tooth decay to infections of the heart valves, lungs, brain, and middle ear. These potentially fatal diseases are commonly treated with antibiotics such as penicillin. The frequent use of antibacterial drugs has sparked the emergence of bacterial strains that are resistant to one or more antibiotics. Infections caused by multidrug resistant strains might become untreatable in the future if no new antibacterial agents are developed in time.

We are interested in the bacterial response to antibiotic treatment in order to understand this type of stress response and to determine new targets for antibacterial drugs. Microarray analysis of mRNA from Streptococcus pneumoniae that had been treated with the antibiotic vancomycin revealed a number of genes that were differentially regulated. We are currently in the process of determining the role of these gene products in the vancomycin-stress response of S. pneumoniae. These studies give us information about new targets for antibiotics and provide us with important insight into bacterial gene regulation and physiology.

PUBLICATIONS

Click to see publications by Dr. Haas as indexed in the National Library of Medicine's database.