Amardeep Kaur

Amardeep Kaur is a Research Associate in the Baliga Lab. Over her 22 years in scientific research, she has participated in various projects, including sequencing portions of Chromosome 15 as part of the Human Genome Sequencing Consortium.  She has also used various experimental techniques (i.e., genetic knockout mutants, microarray studies, growth assays) along with various software tools to elucidate gene regulatory networks of halophilic archaea Halobacterium salinarum (Kaur et al, 2006, 2010). Amardeep worked collaboratively to study adaptive prediction behavior of Saccharomyces cerevisiae where novel associations between two different environmental factors were investigated. 

Currently, Amardeep’s research projects involve experiments to discover new methods to repress antibiotic resistance using E. coli and to understand the complexity of tuberculosis and its infectious agent, Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb). There is an urgent need to better understand the phenotypic heterogeneity of Mtb to identify new antitubercular drug targets. She works in the BSL-3 lab to generate various gene knockdown strains using CRISPR interference (CRISPRi) to identify vulnerabilities in Mtb that may be exploited as potential drug targets. She is involved in determining minimum inhibitory concentrations and performing kill curve experiments with antibiotic-treated CRISPRi-mediated knockdown strains to determine their susceptibility to various drugs. Additionally, she has been using high-throughput Biolog phenotype microarrays (with Omnilog instrument) to analyze the metabolic capabilities of the CRISPRi-mediated knockdown strains. Amardeep also helps in projects to investigate the transcriptional response of Mtb in response to different environmental conditions using RNA-seq and Path-seq.

Amardeep carries out regular lab duties such as ordering lab’s consumable supplies, keeping track of NGS reagents, and organizing Mtb strains in BSL3 laboratory freezers, etc.