Dr. Daniel Nelson is helping to keep both animals and humans healthier, through his research with a bacteriophage that kills the pathogenic bacterium Streptococcus. Dr. Nelson is an assistant professor at the UMBI's CARB facility, where he specializes in pathobiology. Bacteriophages are viruses that have evolved to replicate in bacterial hosts. In the process of replicating, the bacteriophage lyse (break open) the bacterial cells and kill the host. Dr. Nelson's main focus is on bacteriophage and lysins. Lysins are bacteria-specific enzymes that break down cell walls, carried by the bacteriophage and deployed to complete their replication cycle. Dr. Nelson is particularly interested in ways that these lysins can be used as disinfectants, and as safe alternatives to antibiotics.

Dr. Nelson's research team, which also includes Dr. Todd Hoopes, Dr. Caren Stark and Hanah Kim, is currently working with various groups of Streptococcus and the specific lysin PlyC which comes from a streptococcal bacteriophage. One particularly promising aspect of these bacteriophages is that they are effective on strains of Streptococcus that have become resistant to traditional antibiotics.

Dr. Nelson's future work will be to genetically modify lysins to increase their effectiveness. He plans to take a few known lysins and study their biochemistry and biophysics. This knowledge will be deployed to generate new modified lysins that (1) are more active (with higher catalytic rates), (2) are more thermostable (greater stability for longer shelf life), and (3) have a higher selectivity for the specific bacterial strains. These efforts could lead to development of powerful new disinfectants, as well as antibiotics that are not subject to the same resistance seen in currently available antibiotics.