Scarlet Shell, Assistant Professor of Biology & Biotechnology (BBT), was awarded a $1 million NSF CAREER award entitled "CAREER: Post-transcriptional regulation of mRNA stability in Mycobacterium smegmatis." This is the second NSF CAREER award received by a BBT faculty member in the past four years.
Under this grant, Dr. Shell will pursue an understanding of how mycobacteria regulate their gene expression in order to survive stressful environments, with a focus on the fundamental molecular and cellular mechanisms governing post-transcriptional gene regulation. The goal of this work is to generate foundational knowledge about the stress-response mechanisms that render mycobacteria so successful in diverse environments, from soil to the human body.