Alla Gagarinova

Positions for undergraduate and graduate students as well as postdoctal fellows are available in the lab. Please contact Dr. Gagarinova to express your interest and obtain additional information.

Academic interests

• Systems biology
• Host-microbe and microbe-microbe interactions
• Environmental adaptation and antibiotic resistance

Brief biography

I completed my Honours BSc degree with high distinction in biology and biochemistry at the University of Toronto in Mississauga. As an undergraduate, I investigated fungal biology and pathogenesis. I completed my MSc in the Department of Biology at the University of Western Ontario (now Western University, in London, Ontario), where I researched viral pathogenesis and evolution. As a Master’s student, I also began teaching in a classroom setting, contributing to collaborative projects, programming and performing data analyses. I obtained my PhD from the Department of Molecular Genetics at the University of Toronto, where I investigated gene-gene functional relationships; conditional rewiring of genetic interactions in response to environment and drugs; and Escherichia coli ribosome biogenesis and protein synthesis. I was involved in the development of systems biology approaches and computational tools. As a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Saskatchewan and a research specialist at the University of Regina, I investigated bacterial pathogenesis, antibiotic resistance, protein-protein and gene-gene interactions.

Starting in July 2023, research in my laboratory at UNB will use interdisciplinary approaches to investigate bacterial biology, genetic and protein-protein interactions, environmental adaptation, antimicrobial resistance, as well as host-microbe and microbe-microbe interactions. The laboratory will be equipped with state-of-the-art robotic instrumentation allowing large-scale bacterial colony pinning, liquid handling, and high-throughput screening. Additional instrumentation, including mass spectrometers and next-generation sequencers, real-time cell metabolic analyzers, RT-PCR and other equipment will be made available by collaborators. This research will be supported by federal, provincial and institutional funds.

Courses taught

• BIOL3013 Advanced Genetics

Selected research

Gagarinova A, Hosseinia A, Rahmatbakhsh M, Istace Z, Phanse S, Moutaoufik M T, Zilocchi M, Zhang Q, Aoki H, Kim S Y, Aly K, Babu M. (2022). Auxotrophic and prototrophic conditional genetic networks reveal the rewiring of transcription factors in Escherichia coli. Nature Communications. 13(1): 4085.

Grishin A, Voth K, Gagarinova A, Cygler M. (2022). Structural biology of the invasion arsenal of Gram-negative bacterial pathogens. The FEBS Journal. 289(6):1385-1427.

Rahmatbakhsh M, Gagarinova A, Babu M. (2021). Bioinformatic analysis of temporal and spatial changes during infection. Frontiers In Genetics, Sec. Systems Biology Archive. ttps://doi.org/10.3389/fgene.2021.667936.

Gagarinova A, Hosseinnia A, Babu M. (2021). Quantitative genetic screens for mapping bacterial pathways and functional networks. Methods in Molecular Biology. 2381: 3-37.