Christopher Michel Kearney, PhD

Education

Ph.D. Plant Pathology, Cornell University
M.S. Biological Sciences, Cal Poly Pomona
B.S. Biological Sciences, University of California, Irvine

Courses Taught

Undergraduate Biology Courses

Graduate Catalog

• BIO 1V90 Individual Topics
• HON 3101 Adv Reading & Research HONORS
• BIO 3V90 Individual Topics
• BIO 4306 Molecular Genetics & Genomics
• HON 4V87 Honors Thesis
• BIO 5351 Advanced Biocomputing

Research Focus

We are focused on eliminating individual pathogens from a complex microbiota. This is different from broad spectrum antibiotics, which indiscriminately kill bacteria, good or bad. In our technology, we start with an antimicrobial peptide and then fuse onto this a guide peptide which specifically binds to a surface feature on the pathogen. Since our target bacteria are in the stomach or gut, we use engineered forms of probiotic bacteria naturally found in the gastrointestinal tract to deliver the guided antimicrobial peptides via secretion.

We have demonstrated this approach in a mouse model for gastric infection by Helicobacter pylori, recently published in Microbiology Spectrum. We are expanding this approach to other gastrointestinal bacteria. The system allows us to ask some interesting evolutionary questions, as the guided antimicrobial peptide is highly specific to the targeted bacterium. Typically, we target virulence factors, so one might expect that the application of this probiotic treatment might result in evolution of the virulence factor and hence evolution of the pathogen away from virulence. We are also interested in targeting several virulence factors or even different portions of the same virulence factor and observing the durability of the treatment against the development of pathogen resistance.

Please see our lab’s webpage via the link at the upper right of this present page.

Recent Publications

[* denotes Kearney Lab members]

1. *Choudhury A, *Ortiz PS, *Young M, *Mahmud MT, Stoffel RT, Greathouse KL, *Kearney CM. 2023. Control of Helicobacter pylori with engineered probiotics secreting selective guided antimicrobial peptides. Microbiol Spectr. Sep 15:e0201423. doi: 10.1128/spectrum.02014-23. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 37712669.
2. Pruett G., *Hawes J, Varnado W, Deerman H., Goddard J., Burkett-Cadena N., *Kearney C.M. 2020. The readily-transformable Impatiens walleriana efficiently attracts nectar feeding with Aedes and Culex mosquitoes in outdoor garden settings in Mississippi and Florida. Acta Tropica 210:105624. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.actatropica.2020.105624
3. *Choudhury, A., *Islam, S.M.A., *Ghidey, M.R., *Kearney, C.M. 2020. Repurposing a drug targeting peptide for targeting antimicrobial peptides against Staphylococcus. Biotechnology Letters, 42(2):287-294. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10529-019-02779-y
4. *Ghidey M., *Islam S.M.A., *Pruett, G., *Kearney C.M. 2020. Making plants into cost-effective bioreactors for highly active antimicrobial peptides. New Biotechnology 56:63-70.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nbt.2019.12.001
5. *Zhou Y., *Ghidey M.R., *Pruett G., *Kearney C.M. 2020. The use of functionally deficient viral vectors as visualization tools to reveal complementation patterns between plant viruses and the silencing suppressor p19. Journal of Virological Methods, 286:113980. doi: 10.1016/j.jviromet.2020.113980.
6. *Islam, S.M.A., *Kearney, C.M., and Baker, E.J. 2018 Assigning biological function using hidden signatures in cystine-stabilized peptide sequences. Sci Rep 8(1):9049. doi: 10.1038/s41598-018-27177-8
7. *Islam, S.M.A., *Kearney, C.M., and Baker, E.J. 2018 Classes, databases and prediction methods of pharmaceutically and commercially important cystine-stabilized peptides. Toxins 10(6). pii: E251. doi: 10.3390/toxins10060251
8. *Islam, S.M.A., Heil, B.J., *Kearney, C.M., and Baker, E.J. 2018 Protein classification using modified n‑grams and skip-grams. Bioinformatics 34(9):1481-1487. doi:10.1093/bioinformatics/btx82
9. *Zhou, Y.Y., and *Kearney, C.M. 2017. Chimeric Flock House virus protein A with endoplasmic reticulum-targeting domain enhances viral replication and virus-like particle trans-encapsidation in plants. Virology 507:151-160. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.virol.2017.04.018
10. *Zhou, Y., *Cox, A.M., and *Kearney, C.M. 2017. Pathogenesis-related proteins induced by agroinoculation associated cell wall weakening can be obviated by spray-on inoculation or mannitol ex vivo culture. Plant Biotechnology Reports 11:161-169. DOI 10.1007/s11816-017-0439-6
11. *Zhou, Y.Y, McCormick, A., and *Kearney, C.M. 2017. Plant Expression of Trans-Encapsidated Viral Nanoparticle Vaccines with Animal RNA Replicons. Methods in molecular biology 1499:77-86. doi: 10.1007/978-1-4939-6481-9_4