Tao Wei (Weitao), Ph.D. and MD
Assistant Professor
Department of Biology
Member, South Texas Center for Emerging Infectious Diseases
Office: SB 4.02.34
Lab: SB 3.01.50
Office Phone: (210) 458-6276
Lab Phone: (210) 458-6276
email: Tao.Wei@utsa.edu
Medical Degree - Henan Medical University in China
Ph.D. - Uppsala University in Sweden
Postdoctoral Fellow - California Institute of Technology
Research Interests
Our research interests focus on Bacterial Biofilm and antimicrobial resistance :
While advent of technology has made modern world comfortable to live in, natural disasters together with unnatural calamities such as wars frequently afflict humans. In their aftermath, bacterial infections and antibacterial resistance emergence have become serious concerns to the healthcare communities. These concerns become intensified when bacteria form multi-cellular communities—biofilms—that contribute to drug resistance and chronic infections. Among the bacterial troublemakers, two opportunistic human bacterial pathogens, Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Acinetobacter baumannii, are biofilm formers notorious for the hospital-acquired or nosocomial infections. P. aeruginosa is associated with the high rates of illness and death in patients with cystic fibrosis, with immunocompromised states, with burn and war wound infections. A. baumannii is often associated with a wide spectrum of infectious diseases ranging from nosocomial, community-acquired infections to those acquired following war or natural disasters. It causes mild-to-severe illness of various types, including post-surgical urinary tract and respiratory tract infections, nosocomial pneumonia, and bacteremia, some of which can be fatal with mortality rates as high as 75%. Furthermore, among military personnel deployed to Middle East, multidrug-resistant Acinetobacter has been reported to cause deep wound infections, osteomyelitis, respiratory infections, and bacteremia.
Our research interest is centered on basic and translational research of bacterial biofilm development. Our long-term goal is to develop effective strategies to disrupt biofilm formation of P. aeruginosa and A. baumannii and to diminish the risk of antimicrobial resistance emergence. Specifically, our research concerning P. aeruginosa is focused on a question how exposure to antimicrobial therapy stimulates biofilm formation. Biofilm stimulation by certain antimicrobial agents may be launched via sophisticated mechanisms: the inhibitors trigger the SOS response to repair DNA damage, while the signaling pathway via bis-(3'-5')-cyclic dimeric guanosine monophosphate (c-di-GMP) regulates biofilm formation to protect the biofilm cells. While mechanisms for biofilm induction remain unclear, our research aim is to elucidate such molecular mechanisms, which will help develop effective therapeutic strategies against the stress-inducible biofilm formation. Additionally, our research regarding A. baumannii is aimed at identifying proteins that can serve as potential targets of wound infection vaccines against A. baumannii biofilms. Our research goal is to develop an effective strategy for treatment of the bacterial infections without increasing the risk of antimicrobial resistance emergence.
Research on War-wound bacterial biofilm and antimicrobial resistance UTSA article:
http://www.utsa.edu/today/2009/08/warzonebacterium.cfm
Recent Publications
Praszkier, J., T. Wei, K. Siemering, and J. Pittard. Comparative analysis of the replication regions of the IncB, IncK, and IncZ plasmids. 1991. J. Bacteriol. 173:2393-2397
Tao Wei and Rolf Bernander. Interaction of the IciA protein with AT-rich regions in plasmid replication origins. Nucleic Acids Res. 1996. 24:1865-1872.
Tao Weitao, Kurt Nordström and Santanu Dasgupta. Mutual suppression of mukB and seqA phenotypes might arise from their opposing influences on the Escherichia coli nucleoid structure. Mol. Microbiol. 1999. 34:157-168.
Tao Weitao, Santanu Dasgupta, and Kurt Nordström. Plasmid R1 is present as clusters in the cells of Escherichia coli. Plasmid. 2000. 43:200-204.
Tao Weitao, Santanu Dasgupta and Kurt Nordström. Role of the mukB gene in chromosome and plasmid partition in Escherichia coli. Mol. Microbiol. 2000. 38:392-400.
Tao Weitao, Santanu Dasgupta, and Kurt Nordström. Escherichia coli cell cycle control genes affect chromosome superhelicity.. EMBO reports. 2000. 1:494-499.
Hoopes, L. L. M., M. Budd, W. Choe, T. Weitao, and J. L. Campbell. Mutations in DNA Replication Genes Reduce Yeast Life Span. 2002. Mol. Cell. Biol. 22:4136-4146.
Tao Weitao, Martin Budd, Laura L. Mays Hoopes and Judith L. Campbell. Dna2 Helicase/Nuclease Causes Replicative Fork Stalling and Double-Strand Breaks in the Ribosomal DNA of Saccharomyces cerevisiae. 2003. J. Biol. Chem. 278:22513-22522.
Tao Weitao, Martin Budd, and Judith L. Campbell. Evidence that yeast SGS1, DNA2, SRS2, and FOB1 interact to maintain rDNA stability. Mut.Res. 2003. 532(1-2):157-72.
Tao Weitao, Martin Budd, and Judith L. Campbell. DNA damage near end of lifespan. In preparation. 2004
Gotoh, H., Weitao, T. 2008. Death mechanism of chronologically aged yeast. Bioscience hypothesis 1: 287-291.
Gotoh, H., Zhang, Y., Dallo, S.F., Hong, S., Kasaraneni, N., Weitao, T. 2008. Pseudomonas aeruginosa under DNA replication inhibition tends to form biofilms via Arr. Research in Microbiology 159:294-302.
Weitao, T. 12/2008. Bacteria form biofilms against cancer metastasis. Medical Hypothesis http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.mehy.2008.11.012.
Weitao, T. 2009. Multicellularity of a unicellular organism in response to DNA replication stress. Research in Microbiology. 160(1): 87-88.
Weitao, T. 2009. Can an antagonist gene of unicellular organism cause chromosome instability in multicellular organisms? DNA Repair. 8(2): 144-145
Dallo F. Shatha., Weitao, T. 2009. Immunization against trauma/war-wound biofilm infections with Acinetobacter baumannii. Advances in Skin & Wound Care. In press
Dallo, S.F. and T. Weitao, Adhesion of Acinetobacter baumannii to extracellular proteins detected by a novel live cell-protein binding assay. Journal Ethnicity and Disease, 2009. Submitted
Gotoh, H., Weitao, T.2009. c-di-GMP and stress-inducible biofilms. In preparation
Other interests:
I enjoy exploring,
The Book of all books,
The Song of all songs,
The Poem of all poems,
The Wisdom of all wisdom;Where the mind of philosophy,
Meets that of science, art and poetry;Where life goes after life,
Where it comes from before life.
Lab Personnel
Shatha F. Dallo, PhD.
An yu Tsai, UTSA graduate student.
Navya Devineni, UTSA graduate student.