Garg Lab
School of Chemistry and Biochemistry

Marine coral mucus-associated microbial and algal endosymbiotic community

Chemical microbiology to infer microbial community response

Respiratory mucus-associated microbial  community

The microbial community residing inside the host, also termed as the 'host microbiome', interacts with each other, the host and the environment, in part, via small molecules called secondary metabolites/specialized metabolites/natural products. Shift in this microbiome can be due to the presence and absence of these small molecule natural products upon specific environmental trigger. Despite the importance of small molecules in human health and microbial ecology, our knowledge base and inventory of these small molecule effectors is limited. We know very little about the function of natural products and regulation of their production in the context of multispecies communities. Garg lab finds these small molecules using mass spectrometry, spatial metabolomics, understands how they are biosynthesized using genomics, and finds what they do using microbiology, microbial genetics, and biochemistry in microbial communities associated with human and coral diseases. Our long-term goal is to understand the role of community composition and microbiome interactions in regulation of secondary metabolism. How microbial interactions and natural product biosynthesis is affected by presence of chemical triggers such as antimicrobial compounds, and bacterial phenotypes such as quorum sensing, pigment production and others and how natural products affect multispecies interactions?

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Awards
2023     NIH Maximizing Investigators’ Research Award (MIRA)                    for Early Stage Investigators (R35)
2023     ACS Academic Young Investigator, Division of Organic                    Chemistry        
2022     Junior Faculty Teaching Excellence Award, Center for                      Teaching and Learning, Georgia Institute of Technology
2022     Vasser Woolley Award for Excellence in                                                 Instruction, Georgia Institute of Technology
2021     NSF CAREER Award
2019     Harold-Nations Faculty Fellow, Georgia Institute of                            Technology
2018     Vasser-Woolley Faculty Fellowship, Georgia Institute of                    Technology
2014     Anne A. Johnson Work Award, Outstanding female                            graduate student for excellence in Biochemistry, UIUC,                    Urbana, Illinois
2013     Catherine Connor Outstanding Dissertation in                                    Biotechnology Award, Roy J. Carver Biotechnology                            Center, UIUC, Urbana, Illinois
​2012     Gumport Travel Award, UIUC, Urbana, Illinois

      Assistant Professor
      School of Chemistry and Biochemistry
      Engineered Biosystems Building
​      Georgia Institute of Technology
      Email: neha.garg (at) chemistry.gatech.edu
      Office: EBB 4016

Professor Garg received Bachelors in Engineering in Biotechnology from University Institute of Technology and Masters in Science from Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi under the mentorship of Professor. Saroj Mishra. During her masters, she spent a year in Berlin, Germany while conducting research with Professor Marion Ansorge Schumacher at Technical University, Berlin as a DAAD Fellow. Garg obtained her Ph.D. in 2013 from the University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign under the direction of Professor Wilfred A. van der Donk and Professor Satish Nair. She then joined Professor Pieter C Dorrestein's research laboratory as a postdoctoral research associate at the University of California, San Diego. Garg joined the faculty at GeorgiaTech in 2017.