Teresa O'Meara, PhD

Teresa O’Meara, PhD, is an Associate Professor of Microbiology and Immunology at the University of Michigan. Her lab is interested in how fungal pathogens are able to cause disease, and uses genetics approaches to tackle this problem. The main pathogens in the lab are Candida albicans and Candida auris. Currently, their NIH-funded projects include understanding mechanisms of adherence in Candida auris, and using co-expression and evolutionary perspectives to understand gene function in emerging fungal pathogens.

Teresa received her BA from the University of Chicago, graduating with honors in Biology. She completed her PhD in Genetics and Genomics from Duke University, where she was supported by an American Heart Association predoctoral fellowship for her work on Cryptococcus neoformans signal transduction cascades and virulence. Her postdoctoral studies at the University of Toronto were supported by an NIH F32 fellowship to use global chemical genetics and proteomic approaches to understand the role of Hsp90 in Candida albicans virulence, drug resistance, and morphology. She also worked on understanding the mechanisms by which Candida albicans can filament and drive host cell death.

The O'Meara lab is interested in how organisms can sense and respond to the environment, with a particular focus on how fungal pathogens adapt to the stresses of a human host. More specifically, we want to understand how fungal pathogens are able to cause disease in humans. This includes asking questions about host-pathogen interactions and the evolution and selective pressures driving pathogenesis. We use functional genomics and genetic approaches to answer these questions. We primarily work on Candida auris, Candida albicans, and Cryptococcus neoformans.