Kroos Lab Members

Ramya Rajagopalan is a postdoc investigating commitment to stages of development in Myxococcus xanthus during starvation and the role played by the transcription factors MrpC and FruA in regulating commitment. She is also investigating regulation of the dev operon in the lab strain DK1622 and in certain wild isolates of M. xanthus. She received her PhD from the University of Hawaii at Manoa, where she studied cellular differentiation and pattern formation in the nitrogen-fixing cyanobacterium Anabaena PCC 7120.

Daniel Parrell is a PhD student in the Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics.  He is trying to understand how the Bacillus subtilis intramembrane protease SpoIVFB is regulated by ATP and he is trying to develop a FRET-based sensor to measure ATP levels in vivo.

Sandra Olenic is a PhD student in the Cell Biology Program.  She is investigating the mechanism by which the Bacillus subtilis protein BofA inhibits cleavage of Pro-σ^K by the intramembrane protease SpoIVFB.  She is also studying other intramembrane proteases of B. subtilis.

Shreya Saha is a PhD student in the Cell Biology Program.  She is studying the signaling and gene regulatory network that governs sporulation of Myxococcus xanthus.  Specifically, she is focusing on how the starvation and C-signal inputs impact the MrpC-FruA-DevT components of the network and its output.

Clayton Wolin is a Biochemistry major working with Daniel Parrell to investigate the effects of substitutions in the Bacillus subtilis intramembrane protease SpoIVFB on its ability to cleave Pro-σ^K.