Keith H. Turner
Postdoctoral Fellow
Research Interests
I am interested in the development and application of state-of-the-art high-throughput genomic approaches to studying bacterial disease. In particular, I am interested in the physiology, gene regulation, polymicrobial interactions, and antibiotic resistance of the opportunistic pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa, which causes a wide range of infections in immunocompromised patients. The general approach I am applying to the study of these infections centers around the application of high-throughput sequencing-based technology to profile differential gene expression and the genetic bases of fitness in a variety of disease-related conditions. Currently, my studies focus on two main types of P. aeruginosa infections:
1.) Infections in the lungs of patients with the recessive genetic disease cystic fibrosis (CF). In patients with CF, the normal capacity of the lungs to clear microbes from the conducting airways is inhibited by a molecular defect in ion transport that results in a thick, dehydrated mucus layer. In addition to being difficult for the ciliated epithelium to clear from the airways, this mucus serves as a potent nutritional substrate for the microbes that inhabit these airways. For example, P. aeruginosa can grow to densities as high as 10 billion cells per mL of this mucus. Furthermore, work in the Whiteley lab has shown that certain nutrients present in this mucus signal to P. aeruginosa to increase virulence factor production. Yet fundamental questions remain about the lifestyle exhibited by P. aeruginosa in this mucus. What are the primary sources of nutrition for P. aeruginosa in the CF lung? What genes contribute to metabolism of these nutrients? I am seeking answers to these questions using a high-throughput sequencing technology known as Tn-Seq. I am also interested in how the presence of coinfecting microbes in the CF lung can affect the metabolism and antibiotic resistance exhibited by P. aeruginosa.
2.) Infections in chronic wounds. These wounds, which include bedsores and diabetic ulcers, are a rapidly growing healthcare problem in the United States, where their treatment is thought to comprise upwards of 10% of the national healthcare budget. And as factors that predispose patients to chronic wounds, such as diabetes, obesity and low socioeconomic status, are increasing in incidence nationwide, the impact of these wounds is set to increase. Infections in chronic wounds are typically polymicrobial in nature, yet P. aeruginosa is the most frequently isolated bacterium from these wounds. Interestingly, the presence of other bacteria in model P. aeruginosa chronic wound infections is associated with delayed healing and increased antibiotic resistance. The main hypothesis of my work on these infections is that interfering with these polymicrobial interactions can alleviate some of these synergistic outcomes seen in real polymicrobial chronic wound infections. To generate hypotheses regarding the molecular mechanisms of these interactions, I am applying Tn-Seq and RNA-seq-based approaches to these model infections in the presence or absence of co-infecting microbes, and determining how the contribution of known or novel antibiotic resistance determinants to fitness changes in co-infection.
Learn more about Keith's research at Keith Turner's Lab.
About Keith
I am originally from Syracuse, New York, but at 12 I moved to Coralville, Iowa, which is a suburb of Iowa City, the home of The University of Iowa. I attended The University of Iowa, where I played a lot of disc golf, played saxophone in the marching band and jazz band and earned a B.S. in Microbiology and Computer Science. I then went to Harvard University for graduate school, working in the lab of Dr. Simon Dove at Children’s Hospital on bistable gene regulation in P. aeruginosa. In my spare time living in Cambridge, I liked brewing beer, riding my bike and rowing on the Dudley House crew team. Now I live in Austin with my fiancée Erika, an Assistant Attorney General for the State of Texas, where I enjoy eating barbecue and tacos, brewing more beer and wearing flip-flops in January.
Publications
For the most up to date list of Keith's publications, click here.
Keith H. Turner, Aimee K. Wessel, Gregory C. Palmer, and Marvin Whiteley (2014). Fitness of a chronic pathogen in natural and synthetic cystic fibrosis sputum. In preparation.
Erika R. Sams., Marvin Whiteley*, and Keith H. Turner* (2014). “The battle for life”: Pasteur, anthrax, and the first probiotics. J Med. Microbiol. In press.
*Co-corresponding authors
http://jmm.sgmjournals.org/content/early/2014/08/14/jmm.0.081844-0.abstract
Keith H. Turner, Jake Everett, Urvish Trivedi, Kendra P. Rumbaugh, and Marvin Whiteley (2014). Requirements for Pseudomonas aeruginosa chronic and acute murine wound infection. PLoS Genet. 10(7): e1004518.
http://www.plosgenetics.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pgen.1004518
Peter Jorth, Keith H. Turner, Pinar Gumus, Nejat Nizam, Nurcan Buduneli, and Marvin Whiteley (2014). Metatranscriptomics of the human oral microbiome during health and disease. mBio. 5(2): e01012-14.
http://mbio.asm.org/content/5/2/e01012-14.short
Justine L. Murray, Jodi L. Connell, Apollo Stacy, Keith H. Turner*, and Marvin Whiteley* (2014). Mechanisms of synergy in polymicrobial infections. J Microbiol. 52(3): 188-99.
*Co-corresponding authors
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs12275-014-4067-3
Deepak Balasubramanian, Hansi Kumari, Melita Jaric, Mitch Fernandez, Keith H. Turner, Simon L. Dove, Giri Narasimhan, Stephen Lory, and Kalai Mathee (2014). Deep sequencing analyses expands the Pseudomonas aeruginosa AmpR regulon to include small RNA-mediated regulation of iron acquisition, heat shock and oxidative stress response. Nucl. Acid. Res. 42(2): 979-98.
http://nar.oxfordjournals.org/content/42/2/979.long
Keith H. Turner. Bistability in Pseudomonas aeruginosa. Dissertation, Harvard University. Ann Arbor: ProQuest/UMI, 2012. (Publication No. 3514105.)
http://search.proquest.com/docview/1027767510/abstract
Alan Basset, Keith H. Turner, Elizabeth Boush, Sabina Sayeed, Simon L. Dove and Richard Malley (2012). An epigenetic switch mediates bistable expression of the type I pilus genes in Streptococcus pneumoniae. J Bacteriol 194(5): 1088-91.
http://jb.asm.org/content/194/5/1088.abstract
Alan Basset, Keith H. Turner, Elizabeth Boush, Sabina Sayeed, Simon L. Dove and Richard Malley (2011). Expression of the type I pneumococcal pilus is bistable and negatively regulated by the structural component RrgA. Infect Immun 79(8): 2974-83.
http://iai.asm.org/cgi/content/abstract/79/8/2974
Keith H. Turner, Isabelle Vallet-Gely and Simon L. Dove (2009). Epigenetic control of virulence gene expression in Pseudomonas aeruginosa by a LysR-type transcription regulator. PLoS Genet 5(12): e1000779.
http://www.plosgenetics.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pgen.1000779
Sandra Castang, Heather R. McManus, Keith H. Turner and Simon L. Dove (2008). H-NS family members function coordinately in an opportunistic pathogen. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 105(48): 18947-52.
http://www.pnas.org/content/105/48/18947.long
Jason W. Johnston, Nathan P. Coussens, Simon Allen, Jon C. D. Houtman, Keith H. Turner, Anthony Zaleski, S. Ramaswamy, Bradford W. Gibson and Michael A. Apicella (2008). Characterization of the N-acetyl-neuraminic acid binding site of the extracytoplasmic solute receptor (SiaP) of Nontypeable Haemophilus influenzae Strain 2019. J Biol Chem 283(2): 855-65.
http://www.jbc.org/content/283/2/855.long
Presentations
Montana Biofilm Meeting, Bozeman, MT, July 2014. Young Investigator Award Presentation: “Genetic requirements in spatially organized polymicrobial wound infection.”
Biofilms6, Vienna, Austria, May 2014. “Genetic requirements in spatially organized polymicrobial wound infections.”
14th International Conference on Pseudomonas, Lausanne, Switzerland, September 2013. “Profiling Pseudomonas aeruginosa wound infections with high-throughput genomic methods.”
Texas State University, Department of Biology, San Marcos, TX, February 2013. “You must be this tall to enter: Mapping genes of Pseudomonas aeruginosa required for infection with next-generation sequencing.”
Honors and Awards
2014 Young Investigator Award, Montana State University Center for Biofilm Engineering, Bozeman, MT
2013-2015 Cystic Fibrosis Foundation Postdoctoral Research Fellowship, Cystic Fibrosis Foundation
2013-2014 Co-PI Seton Clinical Research Pilot Program, Seton Healthcare, Austin, TX
2004-2005, Kathleen K. Beninga Microbiology Scholar, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA
2003-2004, Research Experience for Undergraduates Fellow, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA
2002-2006, Presidential Scholar, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA
2002-2006, National Merit Scholar, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA
Websites
