Research in the Tal-Gan laboratory is focused on the development of chemical-based tools to address important biological questions with potential therapeutic implications. There is a constant demand for new and improved chemical probes that can be utilized to study diverse biological systems, and peptides represent attractive tools for the generation of such probes. My lab uses peptides and their analogs to study important signaling pathways and develop novel drug-leads.

Quorum sensing, QS, is a cell density-based communication mechanism that bacteria utilize to regulate a variety of symbiotic and pathogenic phenotypes. As such, QS has attracted significant attention as a potential anti-virulence therapeutic target. Gram-positive bacterial species utilize peptides, termed autoinducers, as the signaling molecules for QS.

We aim to develop autoinducer-based QS modulators that would be applied to study different Gram-positive bacterial species, with an emphasis on streptococci, investigate the molecular mechanisms that drive signal peptide-receptor binding and lead to QS activation, and interrogate the role of QS in bacterial virulence and inter-species competition.