Garg Lab
School of Chemistry and Biochemistry
Marine coral mucus-associated microbial and algal endosymbiotic community
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Chemical microbiology to infer microbial community response
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Respiratory mucus-associated microbial community
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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?
Blanchard Early Career Professor, College of Sciences
School of Chemistry and Biochemistry Center for Microbial Dynamics and Infectious Disease Center for Cystic Fibrosis Airway Disease Research Engineered Biosystems Building Georgia Institute of Technology Email: neha.garg (at) chemistry.gatech.edu Office: EBB 4016 950 Atlantic Drive, Atlanta GA 30332 |
Awards 2024-26 College of Sciences Blanchard Early Career Professor, Georgia Institute of Technology 2024 Natural Product Reports Emerging Investigator Lectureship Award 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 2023 Emerging investigator highlighted by the journal ChemBioChem (ChemBioTalents) 2021 NSF CAREER Award 2019 Emerging Investigator highlighted by the Journal of the American Society for Mass Spectrometry 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 C atherine Connor Outstanding Dissertation in Biotechnology Award, Roy J. Carver Biotechnology Center, UIUC, Urbana, Illinois 2012 Gumport Travel Award, UIUC, Urbana, Illinois 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. |