The Silas Lab is focused on addressing the global health crisis of antimicrobial resistance and expanding our understanding of the enormous genetic diversity of bacteriophages—viruses that infect and kill bacteria. By pinpointing common antivirus mechanisms in wild strains of pathogenic bacteria, the lab is painting a comprehensive picture of the entire defense architecture that phages encounter when infecting cells. Silas combines this information with AI-powered inferences to engineer phage cocktails that can be used as reliable therapeutic agents in our fight against drug-resistant bacteria.
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The World Health Organization classifies antimicrobial resistance as a global health crisis, threatening the prevention and treatment of an increasing number of infections. One of the most promising approaches for defeating drug-resistant infections is based on bacteriophages, more commonly known as “phages,” which are viruses that naturally infect and often kill bacteria in our bodies and throughout nature.
Sukrit Silas is working to harness the vast potential of phages to counter grave bacterial threats to human life. His lab carries out large-scale screens of tens of thousands of phage genes in hundreds of wild bacterial strains to identify those with the potential to become or enhance phage-based therapies.
Using high-throughput screening methods, Silas looks beyond the limited number of phage genes that are typically studied. Already, he has found critical barriers that these viruses must overcome to enter bacterial cells—knowledge that will help in designing effective new treatments.
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