Stavroula Hatzios, Ph.D.

Stavroula Hatzios, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology and of Chemistry in the Microbial Sciences Institute at Yale University. She received her B.S. in Chemistry from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and her Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley. As a graduate student with Carolyn Bertozzi, she identified an osmotic stress response pathway that modulates the cell wall structure and antibiotic resistance of the tuberculosis pathogen Mycobacterium tuberculosis. After earning her Ph.D., she was awarded a global health research fellowship to study the population genetics of M. tuberculosis in Uganda. She completed her postdoctoral work in Matthew Waldor’s laboratory at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital, where she was a Charles A. King Trust Postdoctoral Fellow. There, she used activity-based proteomics to study the enzymatic crosstalk between bacterial and host cells in an animal model of cholera. In January 2017, Stavroula joined the faculty of Yale University as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology. Her laboratory studies proteins, post-translational modifications, and metabolites that shape host–microbe dynamics in gastrointestinal infections.

Research:
My laboratory studies host–microbe interactions in the gastrointestinal tract by using chemical tools to discover proteins, post-translational modifications, and metabolites that shape cell signaling at the molecular level. Our primary goal is to understand how infection-associated oxidative stress influences host cell signaling and microbial adaptation to the host environment. We use a combination of chemical proteomics, genetics, biochemical methods, and infection models to identify proteins that are post-translationally modified by oxidative stress and to determine how protein oxidation affects host–microbe interactions. In addition, we aim to develop new probes and antimicrobials for the precise detection and inhibition of disease-causing bacteria in the gut. By bridging the fields of chemistry and microbiology, we strive to develop new approaches that will increase basic understanding of host–microbe interactions and generate new leads for therapeutic targets, activity-based diagnostics, and drug-delivery systems.