Dr. Ashley Groshong is an alumnus of our Ph.D. program in Microbiology & Immunology (2014). Working in the laboratory of Dr. Jon Blevins, she studied virulence factors of the Lyme disease spirochete, Borrelia burgdorferi. She continued her work on B. burgdorferi as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Connecticut Health Center focusing on gene regulation.
In 2021, she started her own research group as the Chief of the Bacterial Physiology and Metabolism Unit at the NIAID Rocky Mountain Laboratories where they study mechanisms of nutrient uptake of spirochetes in the mammalian host and tick vector.
Dr. Groshong recently published the first study from her laboratory investigating spirochete amino acid transporters as potential drug targets to treat Lyme disease.
K Holly and A Kataria, et al. Unguarded Liabilities: Borrelia burgdorferi’s complex amino acid dependence exposes unique avenues of inhibition. Frontiers in Antibiotics DOI: 10.3389/frabi.2024.1395425 (2024).