The Randall Lab at UMKC

Our main interest is finding new treatments for antimicrobial resistant (AMR) infections, which are now among the leading causes of death worldwide. We use a combination of synthetic microbiology, biochemistry, and molecular biology to help discover new potential peptide antibiotics and determine their mechanism of action, structure, potency, and toxicity. Our favorite technique is called surface localized antimicrobial display (SLAY), which engineers bacteria to present hundreds of thousands of candidate peptides on their cell surface and identifies those with self-killing activity. We also use the Galleria mellonella (wax worm) larvae model of infection to evaluate the therapeutic potential of lead peptide antibiotics we discover.