Affiliation: Cooper Medical School of Rowan University

Dr. Valerie Carabetta joined Cooper Medical School of Rowan University in 2018, where she educates medical students in microbiology and infectious disease. She earned her PhD from Princeton University in Molecular Biology and completed her post-doctoral research at the Public Health Research Institute, New Jersey Medical School (Rutgers University). The overarching theme of her research program is combatting antimicrobial resistance in bacteria, either by performing the basic research needed to design novel therapeutics, designing new strategies to combat infections or studying the mechanisms of resistance. One of her interests involves understanding the physiological consequences of protein acetylation in bacteria, and the underlying mechanisms that control it. Recently, N^e-lysine acetylation was realized to be a prevalent bacterial post-translational modification (PTM), contrary to the historical notion that this was a rare occurrence. Her focus is on understanding the biological consequences of the acetylation of a histone-like protein in bacteria. To study these histone-like proteins, she uses molecular genetics, biochemistry, and mass spectrometry-based techniques. With proper study, the enzymes involved in regulation (i.e. acetylases and deacetylases) or the acetylated form of a key protein (i.e. virulence factors, essential genes, etc.) may provide valuable, druggable targets.