Grant to further research, study about chlamydia

More than 1 million cases of chlamydial infection were reported in the United States in 2010, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

However, lack of awareness and testing suggests significant under-reporting of chlamydia, leading experts to estimate the numbers are much higher. The CDC estimates that 2.8 million cases of chlamydial infection occur annually in the U.S.
Chlamydia is the most commonly reported infectious disease in the country, and IU microbiologist David Nelson is concerned.

Nelson and his team of students in Jordan Hall have been studying chlamydia for the past five years, making advances in the development of tools for understanding the genetics of chlamydia.

Because of their past successes and proposed projects for the future, Nelson and his team were recently awarded a $2.5 million grant by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases to continue work in genetic analysis of mechanisms of chlamydial immune evasion.

Thanks to the grant, Nelson and his team will continue working to analyze various strains of chlamydia through a variety of techniques, including studies with mice and mutated forms of the bacteria.

The bacterium that causes this disease, Chlamydia trachomatis, exists in many different strains, each carrying a slightly different version of the genome. Thus, patients with chlamydia display a wide variety of symptoms and diseases ranging from mild, flu-like infections to pneumonia and even blindness, depending on the particular strain and means of infection.

The vast variation of diseases that arises from seemingly identical strains of bacterium is what first attracted Nelson to this research topic.

“I’m interested in how pathogens get around immune systems and cause disease, ultimately allowing us to discover new ways of developing vaccines,” he said.
Currently, no vaccine is available for chlamydia.

Third-year biochemistry Ph.D. student Jasmine Newman works in Nelson’s lab.
“I think it’s very interesting because of the medical applications of our research,” Newman said. “It’s also a lot of fun to work in this lab.”

Within the larger project, Newman is investigating mutants to learn more about a specific region of the genome.

Another Ph.D. student in the lab, Amanda Roehl, is working on a project that involves an innovative molecular biology technique that allows her to identify mutations in chlamydia genes. Once mutations are identified, they can be studied to understand specific gene functions.

Newman was quick to point to his lab graduate students as making this research possible, including Newman, Roehl and Krithika Rajaram.

“Science on this scale is really a team effort,” Newman said. “These students work very hard. Ultimately, a grant like this one will put five graduate students through their entire program. I think of it as training the next generation of scientists.”