msi postdoctoral fellow 2007

adam bahrami

Genomic and Ecological Mechanisms Regulating C. elegans Aversive Learning to Bacterial Pathogens

Adam Bahrami is an evolutionary biologist studying the role of microbial interaction on plant and animal behavior.

Adam received his Ph.D. in Organismal and Evolutionary biology from Harvard University in May 2007.  For his dissertation, Adam investigated inducible plant resistance responses in the context of simultaneous attack by microbial pathogens and insect herbivores.  This work uncovered complex signaling interactions constraining optimal expression of plant defense, including constraints arising from ‘hard-wired’ trade-offs in inducible resistance responses and pathogen manipulation of plant defense signaling. 

Before coming to Harvard, Adam earned a B.S. in Conservation and Resource Studies from the University of California-Berkeley and worked as a research technician in fungal pathogenesis at the University of California-San Francisco.

As a Microbial Sciences Initiative Fellow, Adam is working with Yun Zhang (Organismic & Evolutionary Biology) and Frederick Ausubel (Mass General Hospital) to unravel how the nematode worm, Caenorhabditis elegans, uses olfactory cues to avoid pathogens among its bacterial food sources.  Nematodes use both innate and learned mechanisms to guide food-seeking behavior, yet relatively little is known about this behavior in the worm’s microbially-complex natural environment:  decomposing organic matter.  The major goals of this work are (1) to understand how ecologically relevant microbial cues are perceived by C. elegans and encoded into appropriate behavioral responses and (2) to characterize natural pathogens and food sources of C. elegans in the wild.

 

Find out more about Dr. Bahrami and his research

Return to MSI postdoctoral fellows