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Virginia Miller, PhD | Institute for Global Health and Infectious Diseases

Virginia Miller, PhD

Professor of Genetics, and Microbiology and Immunology

Assistant Dean of Graduate Education, School of Medicine

virginia-miller-IGHID-Profile

Contact Information

Address

Office:
6202 Marsico Hall
CB#7290
Chapel Hill, NC 27599

Resources

Virginia Miller, PhD

Professor of Genetics, and Microbiology and Immunology

Assistant Dean of Graduate Education, School of Medicine

Areas of Interest

Genetic analysis of virulence of Yersinia pestis, Yersinia enterocolitica and Klebsiella

About

Dr. Miller’s laboratory has used several Gram negative bacterial pathogens, YersiniaSalmonella, and Klebsiella as model systems to study bacterial pathogenesis. The long-term goals of her work are to understand the bacteria-host interaction at the molecular level to learn how this interaction affects the pathogenesis of infections, and to understand how these pathogens co-ordinate the expression of virulence determinants during an infection. To do this they use genetic, molecular and immunological approaches, in conjunction with the mouse model of infection. Currently, research in the Miller lab focuses on Klebsiella pneumoniae. Klebsiella pneumoniae (Kpn), is a bacterial pathogen that has a remarkable ability to cause a wide range of human diseases including pneumonia often accompanied by systemic spread to other organs. Kpn strains are broadly divided into two classes: Classical strains which are a notable problem in healthcare settings due to multidrug resistance, and hypervirulent strains which are drug sensitive, but able to establish disease in immunocompetent hosts. Alarmingly, there has been an increased frequency of clinical isolates that have both drug resistance and hv-associated genes. One such hv-associated locus is rmpADC which is required for maximal capsule gene (cps) expression and confers hypermucoviscosity (HMV). The capsule is required by all Kpn strains to cause disease and HMV has been tightly associated with hypervirulence. The lab recently found that RmpA autoregulates the expression of the promoter driving expression of the other two genes in the operon, rmpD , and rmpC. The lab showed that RmpC is a transcriptional regulator that is required for maximal cps expression and RmpD is a small protein that is required for the HMV phenotype. Importantly, these analyses indicated that HMV and capsule are separable phenotypes and that HMV and capsule likely make distinct contributions to virulence in a mouse model of pneumonia. RmpC appears to regulate the expression of ~200 genes in addition to regulating the expression of capsule genes.  We are currently employing a variety of approaches to investigate how RmpD and RmpC contribute to HMV, capsule, and virulence.

Education 

  • Undergraduate

    University of Carolina

  • PhD

    Harvard University

  • Post-doctoral

    Stanford University