SelectedWorks - Robert P. Smith

Contact

Selected Works of Robert P. Smith

Associate Professor

Dr. Smith received his Ph. D. in Biology from Carleton University in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. As a Canadian Graduate Scholar, and a Young Ambassador of Science, he studied non self recognition is filamentous fungi as a method to promote spread of viruses in pathogenic fungal species. Upon graduation, he became a post-doctoral associate at Duke University. As a Duke Scholar in Infectious Disease, he used a combination of systems biology and synthetic biology to investigate mechanisms of antibiotics resistance and the spread of invasive species. Currently, Dr. Smith's lab focuses on understanding cooperation in bacteria using a multidisciplinary approach involving quantitative biology and mathematical modeling. Goals of his current research program are to develop new strategies to manipulate cooperation in spatially structured bacterial populations, as well as to manipulate cooperation to reduce antibiotic resistance.

Works
About

×

About Robert P. Smith

Dr. Smith received his Ph. D. in Biology from Carleton University in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. As a Canadian Graduate Scholar, and a Young Ambassador of Science, he studied non self recognition is filamentous fungi as a method to promote spread of viruses in pathogenic fungal species. Upon graduation, he became a post-doctoral associate at Duke University. As a Duke Scholar in Infectious Disease, he used a combination of systems biology and synthetic biology to investigate mechanisms of antibiotics resistance and the spread of invasive species. Currently, Dr. Smith's lab focuses on understanding cooperation in bacteria using a multidisciplinary approach involving quantitative biology and mathematical modeling. Goals of his current research program are to develop new strategies to manipulate cooperation in spatially structured bacterial populations, as well as to manipulate cooperation to reduce antibiotic resistance.

Articles (21)

Journal articles written or co-written by Dr. Robert P. Smith.

Periodically Disturbing the Spatial Structure of Biofilms Can Affect the Production of an Essential Virulence Factor in Pseudomonas aeruginosa (Rebecca J Quinn, Ivana Barraza, Laura García-Diéguez, et al.) mSystems (2021)

Understanding the environmental factors that affect the production of virulence factors has major implications in evolution and medicine. While spatial structure is important in virulence factor production, observations of this relationship have occurred in undisturbed ...

A Potential Tradeoff Between Feeding Rate and Aversive Learning Determines Intoxication in a Caenorhabditis elegans Host-Pathogen System (Pallavi Velagapudi, Rachel Ghoubrial, Ratnavi Shah, et al.) Microbes and Infection (2020)

Despite being the first line of defense against infection, little is known about how host-pathogen interactions determine avoidance. Caenorhabditis elegans can become infected by chemoattractant-producing bacteria through ingestion. The worms can learn to associate these ...

Gut Microbiome Diversity Is Associated with Sleep Physiology in Humans (Robert Smith, Cole Easson, Sarah M. Lyle, et al.) PLoS One (2019)

The human gut microbiome can influence health through the brain-gut-microbiome axis. Growing evidence suggests that the gut microbiome can influence sleep quality. Previous studies that have examined sleep deprivation and the human gut microbiome have ...

Gut Microbiome Diversity is Associated with Sleep Physiology in Humans (Robert P Smith, Cole G Easson, Sarah M Lyle, et al.) PLoS One (2019)

The human gut microbiome can influence health through the brain-gut-microbiome axis. Growing evidence suggests that the gut microbiome can influence sleep quality. Previous studies that have examined sleep deprivation and the human gut microbiome have ...

The Public and Private Benefit of an Impure Public Good Determines the Sensitivity of Bacteria to Population Collapse in a Snowdrift Game (Robert Smith, Aimee Doiron, Rodrigo Muzquiz, et al.) Environmental Microbiology (2019)

When cooperation is critical for survival, cheating can lead to population collapse. One mechanism of cooperation that permits the coexistence of cooperators and cheaters is an impure public good, whose public benefits are shared, but ...

Timing Between Successive Introduction Events Determines Establishment Success in Bacteria with an Allee Effect (Michael D. Dressler, Josue Conde, Omar T. Eldakar, et al.) Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences (2019)

Propagule pressure is a leading determinant of population establishment. Yet, an experimental understanding of how propagule size and number (two principal parts of propagule pressure) determine establishment success remains incomplete. Theoretical studies suggest that the ...

Cooperation and Competition Shape Ecological Resistance During Periodic Spatial Disturbance of Engineered Bacteria (Cortney E. Wilson, Allison J. Lopatkin, Travis J. A. Craddock, et al.) Scientific Reports (2017)

Cooperation is fundamental to the survival of many bacterial species. Previous studies have shown that spatial structure can both promote and suppress cooperation. Most environments where bacteria are found are periodically disturbed, which can affect ...

Synthetically Engineered Microbes Reveal Interesting Principles of Cooperation (Michael D. Dressler, Corey J. Clark, Chelsea A. Thachettu, et al.) Frontiers of Chemical Science and Engineering (2017)

Cooperation is ubiquitous in biological systems. However, if natural selection favors traits that confer an advantage to one individual over another, then helping others would be paradoxical. Nevertheless, cooperation persists and is critical in maintaining ...

Antibiotics as a selective driver for conjugation dynamics (Allison J. Lopatkin, Shuqiang Huang, Robert P Smith, et al.) Nature Microbiology (2016)

It is generally assumed that antibiotics can promote horizontal gene transfer. However, because of a variety of confounding factors that complicate the interpretation of previous studies, the mechanisms by which antibiotics modulate horizontal gene transfer ...

Circumvention of Learning Increases Intoxication Efficacy of Nematicidal Engineered Bacteria (Olena R. Bracho, Cyril Mancherry, Evan Haskell, et al.) ACS Synthetic Biology (2015)

Synthetic biology holds promise to engineer systems to treat diseases. One critical, yet underexplored, facet of designing such systems is the interplay between the system and the pathogen. Understanding this interplay may be critical to ...

Phenotypic Signatures Arising from Unbalanced Bacterial Growth (Cheemang Tan, Robert P. Smith, Ming-Chi Tsai, et al.) PLoS Computational Biology (2014)

Fluctuations in the growth rate of a bacterial culture during unbalanced growth are generally considered undesirable in quantitative studies of bacterial physiology. Under well-controlled experimental conditions, however, these fluctuations are not random but instead reflect ...

Programmed Allee Effect in Bacteria Causes a Tradeoff Between Population Spread and Survival (Robert P. Smith, Cheemang Tan, Jaydeep K. Srimani, et al.) Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (2014)

Dispersal is necessary for spread into new habitats, but it has also been shown to inhibit spread. Theoretical studies have suggested that the presence of a strong Allee effect may account for these counterintuitive observations. ...

Nonself Recognition Through Intermolecular Disulfide Bond Formation of Ribonucleotide Reductase in Neurospora (Robert P. Smith, Kenji Wellman, Leila Haidari, et al.) Genetics (2013)

Type I ribonucleotide reductases (RNRs) are conserved across diverse taxa and are essential for the conversion of RNA into DNA precursors. In Neurospora crassa, the large subunit of RNR (UN-24) is unusual in that it ...

Trans-Species Activity of a Nonself Recognition Domain (Robert P. Smith, Kenji Wellman and Myron L. Smith) BMC Microbiology (2013)

Background: The ability to distinguish nonself from self is a fundamental characteristic of biological systems. In the filamentous fungus Neurospora crassa, multiple incompatibility genes mediate nonself recognition during vegetative growth. One of these genes, un-24, ...

The Inoculum Effect and Band-Pass Bacterial Response to Periodic Antiobiotic Treatment (Cheemang Tan, Robert P. Smith, Jaydeep K. Srimani, et al.) Molecular Systems Biology (2012)

The inoculum effect (IE) refers to the decreasing efficacy of an antibiotic with increasing bacterial density. It represents a unique strategy of antibiotic tolerance and it can complicate design of effective antibiotic treatment of bacterial ...

Engineering Microbial Systems to Explore Ecological and Evolutionary Dynamics (Yu Tanouchi, Robert P. Smith and Lingchong You) Current Opinion in Biotechnology (2012)

A major goal of biological research is to provide a mechanistic understanding of diverse biological processes. To this end, synthetic biology offers a powerful approach, whereby biological questions can be addressed in a well-defined framework. ...

A Synthetic Biology Approach to Understanding Cellular Information Processing (Katherine A. Riccione, Robert P. Smith, Anna J. Lee, et al.) ACS Synthetic Biology (2012)

The survival of cells and organisms requires proper responses to environmental signals. These responses are governed by cellular networks, which serve to process diverse environmental cues. Biological networks often contain recurring network topologies called “motifs”. ...

Design Principles and Applications of Engineered Microbial Consortia (Robert P. Smith) Acta Horticulturae (2011)

Synthetic biology has generated countless examples of novel behavior in bacteria. Through a combination of mathematical modeling and experimental analyses, researchers utilize engineered genetic circuits to predict and control bacteria, yeast and mammalian cells. However, ...

Secondary Assays for Testing the Mode of Action of Natural Products with Bioactivity Against Fungi (Robert P. Smith, Isabel Cruz, Golshani Ashkan, et al.) Pharmaceutical Biology (2008)

Identification of novel antifungals is needed, and plant-derived compounds offer important leads in this respect. This article initiates a compendium of secondary assays for testing hypotheses on mode of action of plant-derived compounds. Three assays ...

Two Yeast Plasmids that Confer Nourseothricin-Dihydrogen Sulfate and Hygromycin B Resistance in Neurospora crassa and Cryphonectria parasitica (Robert P. Smith and Myron L. Smith) Fungal Genetics Newsletter (2007)

Two plasmids that were previously used with yeast, pRS41N and pRS41H, were found to confer clonNAT and hygromycin B resistance, respectively, in the filamentous fungi Neurospora crassa and Cryphonectria parasitica. These plasmids are suitable for ...

Using Periodic Spatial Disturbance to Manipulate Cooperation in Bacteria (Robert Smith) NSU Grant Awards (2018)

Bacteria communicate and cooperate to dictate a variety of cellular behaviors including pathogenesis and antibiotic resistance. While researchers have gained insight into the mechanisms involved in these processes, it remains unclear how microbial cooperation is ...

Modeling and Simulation of Caenorhabditis elegans Chemotaxis in Response to a Dynamic Engineered Bacteria (Divya A Pandya, Evan Haskell, Robert Smith, et al.) Biology Faculty Proceedings, Presentations, Speeches, Lectures (2016)

Nematodes remain important causative agents of diseases. While several studies have examined how nematodes behave in response to a chemoattractant, how the characteristics of the chemoattractant affect chemotaxis has yet to be explored. A mathematical ...

Development of Larval Hookworms from Raccoon, Procyon lotor, as Experimental Models in Nematode-Based Laboratory Assays (H. Narlapati, R. St. Godard, Robert Smith, et al.) Biology Faculty Proceedings, Presentations, Speeches, Lectures (2016)

Efficacy of Nematicidal Engineered Bacteria Against Diverse Nematode Species (Chelsea A. Thachettu, Evan Haskell, Christopher Blanar, et al.) Mathematics Faculty Proceedings, Presentations, Speeches, Lectures (2016)