Lab Members Nicole Liberati

 Nicole Liberati Ph.D.

 

Wellman 10, Dept. of Molecular Biology
Massachusetts General Hospital
50 Blossom Street
Boston, MA 02114

Tel: (617) 726-5950
Fax: (617) 726-5949
liberati@molbio.mgh.harvard.edu

Research Interest:
With the completion of the entire Pseudomonas aeruginosa chromosome sequence, our understanding of bacterial virulence can now occur at the genomic level. To facilitate this level of understanding, I am constructing a P. aeruginosa unigene library that will consist of non-redundant transposon insertion mutants with a disruption in each non-essential open reading frame in the P. aeruginosa genome. Progress on the library and mutants currently available to the public can be viewed at http://pga.mgh.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/pa14/mutants/retrieve.cgi. The defined nature of this mutant library, will allow myself and others in the lab to perform exhaustive screens for genes required for P. aeruginosa pathogenesis. Such analyses will provide a comprehensive view of the universal mechanisms employed by P. aeruginosa to infect its many hosts while offering insight into the evolutionary history of multi-host pathogenesis.

 

Selected Publications:

  • Liberati, N. T. and Wang, X.-F. TGFb Receptor Signaling. In: Encyclopedia of Cancer, second edition. Edited by Bertino, J. R. Academic Press; 2002. San Diego, CA. In press.
  • Liberati, N. T., Moniwa, M., Borton, A. J., Davie, J. R., Wang, X.-F. 2001. An essential role for Mad Homology Domain 1 in the association of Smad3 with histone deacetylase activity. Journal of Biological Chemistry. 276:22595-603.
  • Liberati, N. T., Datto, M. B., Frederick, J. P., Shen, X., Wong, C., Rougier-Chapman, E. M., Wang, X.-F. 1999. Smads bind directly to the Jun family of AP-1 transcription factors. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA.96:4844-4849.