Lindsay Kalan
Position title: Honorary Fellow, Medical Microbiology & Immunology
Email: lkalan@wisc.edu
Phone: Office: (608) 262-6977, Laboratory: 262-6980
Lab Website
Areas of Study
Symbiosis, Bacterial Pathogenesis
Research Overview
Living in us and on us are trillions of microorganisms; bacteria, fungi, and viruses assemble into complex communities to form the microbiome. Across the biogeography of the human body exists distinct microbial signatures differentiating the gut, oral, airway, and skin microbiomes. Our research is focused on the body’s primary environmental barrier: the skin. We are interested in understanding how microbial communities assemble and interact with each other and their host across the different microenvironments of the skin. A healthy skin microbiome is important to maintain tissue homeostasis and educate the immune system. However, microbial imbalances are also associated with skin disorders and chronic cutaneous infection. We use a highly inter-disciplinary approach that combines high-throughput technologies such as deep sequencing and untargeted metabolomics, with bioinformatics, and wet-lab experimental systems, to elucidate how this balance between beneficial and foreign microbes is maintained at the skin surface and in the context of non-healing chronic wounds.